We’re determined that young people should be able to continue working towards their Awards and have their achievements recognised – but we also know that COVID-19 will leave DofE centres facing real challenges in delivering expeditions and young people accessing residentials over the next academic year.

DofE participants across the UK continue to work hard to complete their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections during the COVID-19 outbreak.

We want them to be recognised for their amazing efforts and achievements – even if the situation means it’s not possible for them to do their expedition and/or residential and therefore achieve their Award right now.

To that end, we’ve extended our new accolade to formally recognise their dedication and accomplishments: the Certificate of Achievement. Certificates will be available to all participants who have completed their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections at all Award levels, but haven’t been able to do their expedition and/or residential at Gold because of the pandemic. Any young person who enrols before 31 July 2021 will be eligible for a Certificate of Achievement.

We also know many young people will want to do their expedition and/or residential and complete their programme when it is safe to do so. To help, we’ve introduced various temporary changes to the Expedition section and the Residential section.

Any participant who enrols between 1 June 2018 and 31 July 2021, has completed their Volunteering, Physical and Skills sections (but not their qualifying expedition) and had them signed off by their Leader, will receive a Certificate of Achievement.

Certificates will be available to all participants who have completed their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections at all Award levels, but haven’t been able to do their expedition and/or residential at Gold because of the pandemic.

The Certificate of Achievement is available as a personalised PDF which a young person can print at home. Once their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections have been approved on eDofE, participants don’t need to take any further action – they will be emailed their personalised Certificate using the email address registered to their eDofE account.

We know that not all young people have access to a printer, and that you may want to celebrate their achievements by presenting them with their Certificate. So, we’ve added a feature to eDofE to let Leaders print participants’ Certificates of Achievement on their behalf, on specially designed paper.

Yes. Any young person who enrols before 31 July 2021 will be eligible for a Certificate of Achievement.

They can then choose to do their expedition, and residential at Gold, to achieve their DofE Award at a later point. You can still issue separate sectional certificates to those who don’t complete their three sections.

That’s correct, any participant who enrols between the qualifying dates at any Award level (including Gold) may receive the Certificate of Achievement if they have completed their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections. To achieve a Gold Award, participants must still complete an expedition and a residential.

Yes. Certificates of Achievement will be based on the sections being approved by a participant’s DofE Leader. So, if the participant goes on to complete their remaining sections, each section will still be quality checked by a trained Award Verifier – although the expectation is that the programme requirements will have been met.

Even if a participant receives the Certificate of Achievement, an Award Verifier can still query a completed section and may require changes to be made before the section(s) can be completed and their Award achieved.

We’re sending out Certificates of Achievement every two weeks to the email address that participants have entered on their eDofE account. If a participant hasn’t yet received their Certificate of Achievement, please ask them to check that their email address has been entered correctly and that it is personal to them, not registered on eDofE for other participants.

Yes. While personalised, digital, Certificates of Achievement will be emailed to participants once their Skills, Volunteering and Physical sections are approved, we know not all young people will have access to a printer and that you may wish to celebrate their achievements by presenting them with their Certificate.

We’ve introduced a feature in eDofE to let DofE Leaders print Certificates on behalf of participants onto high-quality, specially designed template Certificates. You can order these blank Certificates from DofE Essentials within eDofE.

For more information, read our step-by-step guide to printing Certificates of Achievement for your participants.

For those participants who simply won’t have the chance to complete an expedition this year and want to progress to the next Award level, we’ve introduced two temporary rule changes.
– At Bronze and Silver, participants who have completed their Skills, Physical and Volunteering sections – thus achieving the DofE Certificate of Achievement – can progress to Silver or Gold as though they have completed the previous level. This means that when they commit to their sectional activities, they will not have to complete additional time requirements. We’ve put together eDofE guidance on allowing participants to proceed as non-direct entrants here.

For those progressing from Bronze to Silver, this means they’ll only have to complete six months of activity, not 12. For Silver to Gold, this means young people will not have to do an additional six months in either Volunteering or the longer of their Physical or Skills sections.
– Bronze participants who progress to Silver in this way will be able to use their Silver practice expedition as their qualifying expedition at Bronze, enabling them to achieve both their Bronze and Silver Awards. Similarly, Silver participants who progress to Gold will be able to use their Gold practice expedition as their qualifying expedition at Silver. This expedition must meet the requirements of the Silver qualifying expedition (three days and two nights), and a Silver Practice Expedition must have been completed in advance. In addition, participants wishing to do a combined Gold/Silver expedition must meet the age requirements of the higher level (they must be at least 16 years old) and they must be enrolled at Gold. For Silver and Gold level, presentations are still required.

Find out more about our Expedition section flexibilities here.