Five students visited Buckingham Palace last week to receive their Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards!

Orlando Joliffe, Freya Norman, Chloe Sneep, Mattie Green, and Bella Wells all received their awards after completing the highest level of the prestigious Duke of Edinburgh award and were delighted to be invited to Buckingham Palace for the presentation.

The group was thrilled that all their hard work has paid off and that they have now completed the award after working towards it for a number of years – they were even treated to some warm, sunny weather!

On the same day as our students visited Buckingham Palace, we submitted our 100th Duke of Edinburgh award of the year for verification, so we will hopefully have lots more students following in the group’s footsteps soon! As well as this, June will see 112 TSI and TSIMS Year 9 students go spend a couple of days off-campus learning campcraft and navigation, ahead of their expeditions in the Quantocks and Blackdown Hills.

At the end of term, 46 Year 12 students will head to the Black Mountains and 35 Year 10s will head to Dartmoor to complete their expeditions.

A big part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award is volunteering, and over the last academic year our students have spent 2,000 hours volunteering – this equates to a social value calculated by DofE of more than £10,000!

We’re very proud of all the students involved in the Duke of Edinburgh Award and the huge amount of hard work they all put in – well done everyone!