Credit Rating the Duke of Edinburgh's Leadership Programme

Founded by HRH Prince Philip in 1956, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) is the world’s leading youth achievement award, with over 300,000 young people currently taking part across the UK. By achieving their DofE, young people develop key skills for work and life, such as leadership, teamwork, resilience, determination and self-confidence.

The charity’s goal is to enable young people of every background to do their DofE and succeed, regardless of any barriers they may face in their life. In Scotland, the organisation currently supports over 20,000 young people each year. 3,000 of them are disadvantaged and vulnerable young people, including young offenders, young people with disabilities, long-term
unemployed, young carers, young parents and those who live in areas of high deprivation.

The Learning Programme  

The DofE Leadership Programme is delivered to young people in classrooms and youth groups across Scotland and includes four modules from its Modular Training Framework:

• Introduction to the DofE;
• Team Work/Leadership Skills;
• Managing a DofE group; and
• Practical DofE Leadership.

The programme was credit rated by SQA in 2011 at SCQF Level 5 with 5 credit points.

Why did you decide to credit rate this programme?  

The SCQF Partnership had identified the need to broaden the range of learning programmes on the Framework that recognised young people’s wider achievement across Scotland, and in partnership with the MacRobert Trust, made funding available to recognise a number of these programmes on the SCQF through the process of credit rating. As a charity with limited funding and resources, the DofE jumped at the chance to have the programme credit rated at no cost to the organisation.

How has having your learning programme SCQF credit rated benefited your learners and your organisation?

The DofE wished to ensure that any young person participating in the learning modules received the maximum value. Also by credit rating the individual modules this ensured young people received recognition if they were not able to complete the full learning programme.

Credit rating has added value to the DofE leadership programme and helped to build the capacity of DofE and youth groups by developing new leaders to support more young people.

Find out more information on the benefits of having your learning programmes credit rated, or contact the SCQF Partnership on 0141 225 2922 or at info@scqf.org.uk.