Duke of Ed

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award is committed to providing for young people an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding programme of personal development, which is of the highest quality and the widest reach. The Award is a personal challenge and not a competition against others. Each participant's programme is tailor-made to reflect the individual starting point, abilities and interests.

The Award is a four section programme with three levels:

The sections involve:

Completing the Duke of Edinburgh's Award at Macarthur

Macarthur students may join the Duke of Edinburgh's Award once they enter Year 9. They will begin working towards their Bronze Award and can continue until they achieve their Gold Award. The first Bronze walk takes place as part of the Year 9 Outdoor Education camp.

Staff work with students to develop their skills and seek to ensure safety on all adventures. Student adventures are structured to increase in challenge as the individual moves through the levels of the award. In recent years these adventures have included hiking through many of the National Parks adjacent to the Sydney metropolitan area.

Gold adventures often offer much greater physical, mental and emotional challenges.

The Award Benefits

The Award gives opportunities for young people to:

• enjoy a wide variety of physical, creative and aesthetic experiences which encourage personal growth and development;
• experience new lifestyles and cultures outside their own immediate neighbourhood, possibly abroad;
• experience a variety of learning and teaching styles with people from different walks of life;
• take decisions of increasing complexity and accept responsibility for the consequences;
• discover new talents and abilities and test values and beliefs;
• give a continuing personal commitment of service to others;
• establish and sustain inter-personal relationships;
• negotiate their own personal programme of participation, seeking out and researching relevant information, and gradually take responsibility for their own learning;
• understanding their strengths and weakness, assess their personal level of competence, increase their own personal effectiveness and take responsibility for their own lives having a great time!