The Duke of Edinburgh's Award

Yes.  The Round Table is an Approved Activity Provider for students working towards achieving their Bronze, Silver and Gold DofE Award.  We are able to act as your Assessor and file a detailed report direct with DofE when you complete the course.  Our students receive personal support and feedback every step of the way to ensure that your DofE experience runs smoothly.

Yes.  We off 3, 6, 12 and 18 month course options that work for the Bronze, Silver or Gold award.

Chloe is a hugely experienced cookery teacher:

• Chloe is a trained chef.  She completed the Profressional Diploma at Leiths School of Food & Wine with distinction and won the Louis Latour wine student of the year
• Chloe has 15 years of cheffing and teaching experience, from cooking at vegan yoga retreats to making wedding cakes to working with major brands such as GoodhouseKeeping Uk, Canon Uk, Maxfactor and Divertimenti. 
• She has had 3 cookbooks published, is a member of the Guild of Food Writers and has had her work featured in a number of publications from The Times to Brides Magazine  
• Over the past 10 years she has specialised in teaching young people and families and is passionate about equipping young people with the skills they need to eat well, which is so important in today's food environment.
• You can find out more about Chloe HERE. 

There are three things that we are really proud of:

- the flexibility and choice of recipes that we offer: we love the fact that every student's portfolio at the end of their DofE course is totally unique with a different set of dishes. We aim to inspire our students to cook with recipes that they like, that fit with their diet and that they will hopefully make again and again

- our skills based learning: we teach our students to really cook, not to just follow a recipe - from learning about balance and seasoning to how to tweak recipes to their liking. By teaching the how's and why's behind the recipes we give students the skills and confidence to cook anything they like

- a very personal student experience: we invest a huge amount of time in supporting our students with personal help and feedback and write detailed Assessor's reports at the end of the course to ensure that their experience on our course in motivating, inspiring and rewarding.  You can take a look at our 5* Google reviews and our example portfolios to see what our students achieve on the course

No.  One of the great things about our courses is that they are completely flexible so you can start them at any time and cook at a time that fits around your other commitments.  We operate all year round so you can cook through the school holidays too.

Absolutely. Each skills tutorial is linked to a choice of recipes, enabling our students to build a tailored course that fits to their diet and taste.  Lots of our recipes are vegetarian, vegan, dairy and gluten free and, even better, because we focus on skills, we empower our students with the knowledge they need to adapt recipes to fit their requirements - that is one of the brilliant things about learning to cook well.  We are always happy to advise on suitable alternatives and we love a challenge if there is a recipe you would like us to help you adapt.  If you have specific dietary requirements please let us know so that we can make sure that we can offer recipes that work for you.  We firmly believe that there is no one diet that fits all and we encourage students to explore new flavours, dishes and cuisines.

No.  Our courses are skills based and start with the basics of knife skills, seasoning and baking so if you a total novice you can get going straight away and, because we focus on building skills, you will see your confidence in the kitchen grow really fast.

Yes.  Our courses are suitable for cooks of all levels and, because we focus on skills, keen cooks can really develop their knowledge.  As our courses are so flexible, keen cooks can start at a higher level and go right the way through to some really advanced techniques. That said, they might also find it useful to go back over classic techniques or fill in any gaps they may have.  The beauty of our course is that it is completely unique for each of our students and we are on hand to help you design the perfect course for you and to ensure you meet your aims.

All our courses work in the same way.  Each week of our course covers a new skill, for example knife skills, marinades, cake making, bread, pastry etc.We cover the all the why's and how's in easy to understand videos, infographics and explainers.  The skills theory is totally optional - some students love to go into all of the detail and others just want to get cooking. 

Once you are happy with the skill, you can put that into practice with a choice of video recipe tutorials which use that skill.  For example, you can practice your knife skills my baking a choice of chunky or smooth tomato soup, ramen bowls, quesadillas or bruschetta.

Our cookalongs are taught by a professional chef and explain all the why's and how's as we go. You can stop and start the video and cook at your pace, at a time that works for you.

To log your cooking, we ask that we take a photo of the dish while it is being cooked and another of it once it has been plated.  You email these to us, we log your progress and send you personalised feedback each week.

At the end of the course we compile everything into a portfolio, file a detailed Assessor's report direct with DofE and send you a course certificate.

We are always on hand to answer questions, give advice and make recipe recommendations to ensure that your DofE journey is smooth and enjoyable.

You are required to cook for 1 hour a week for 13, 26, 52 or 78 weeks. You can cook anything that you like and we encourage our students to try new skills and dishes each week.  Our savoury recipes are all designed as family meals - taking responsibility for a weekly family meal is a great way to work through the course and is a fantastic life skill to develop.  Our baking course covers classic skills each week with a variety bakes and is ideal if you enjoy baking and would like to set aside an hour at the weekend each weekend and bake something delicious.  For our more advanced students, tackling complex recipes can take more time so they may decide to sometime spend 2 hours cooking every fortnight.

To log your cooking, we ask that we take a photo of the dish while it is being cooked and another of it once it has been plated.  You email these to us, we log your progress and send you personalised feedback each week.

At the end of the course we compile everything into a portfolio, file a detailed Assessor's report direct with DofE and send you a course certificate.

We are always on hand to answer questions, give advice and make recipe recommendations to ensure that your DofE journey is smooth and enjoyable.

Chloe runs all of our DofE courses and is passionate about teaching young people to cook really well. She absolutely loves to talk about cooking and is always available to answer questions, suggest recipes and help with course suggestions.

When you submit a photo of what you have cooked you will receive personal feedback on the dish that you have cooked and we hold optional twice weekly live online drop ins where you can ask questions, check in with your progress or just have a chat about food.

You can email us any time and we are always happy to answer questions, give advice or make recipe recommendations.

That is absolutely fine.  Our courses are designed to be completely flexible so that you can tailor your course to your taste and diet.  Each week has lots of recipe choices so hopefully you might find something you would like to try, but, if not, you can choose something else from a different week or from our extensive bank of over 150 recipe tutorials.  Our courses are all about teaching you to cook food that you like and will hopefully want to cook again so nobody is going to make you cook dishes that you don't want to eat.

That is absolutely fine.  We realise that our students have busy lives, get poorly, need to sit exams and go on holiday.  It is fine to miss a week or two - students tend to either cook a couple of dishes one week to catch up or overrun by a week or two.  Provided that you are cooking regularly and complete the course within a reasonable timeframe that is fine.  We are always here to support students with the course and can suggest quick and easy options if you feel that you getting behind or have a lot to juggle - just get in touch and let us know.  All of our team are parents to teenagers and understand that it can be hard to fit everything in.

Sometimes, yes! But they are also hugely satisfying.

We realise that dishes like lasagne and pizza (and a lot of our more advanced dishes such as the pies, breads, patisserie and bao buns) take more than the required hour of cooking time so these count as two weeks of cooking.

The fact that each week has a number of recipe options to choose from means that you can choose recipes that fit with the time that you have and we have a list of quick and easy recipes that are perfect for weeks when you are short on time - for example eggs on toast or breakfast pancakes are quick to make and still teach you really good skills.

You can on are Ultimate Skills Course. Our Ultimate Skills Course is designed to build skills week by week so we really encourage students who are new to cooking to work their way through our Level 1 and 2 courses but you are more than welcome to try recipes from any of our courses.  For example, we have Level 1 students making fantastic Christmas Yule Logs (a Level 4 recipe) and summer pavlovas (a Level 3 recipe) and some students who have mixed and matched recipes from all of the 4 Course Levels to create the perfect course for them.

This will depend on the Award that you are working towards - Bronze, Silver or Gold.  You can find the time requirements on the DofE website HERE.

In summary:

BRONZE AWARD

For the Bronze Award participants must complete:

- A Volunteering, Physical and Skills Section. 2 of these sections are for 3 months and one of these sections must be 6 months. You can choose which.

- Expedition section: 2 days / 1 night

If you would like to do cookery for your skills section but are unsure whether you would like to do it for 3 or 6 months you can sign up for 3 months and always extend to 6 months later on.

SILVER AWARD

The timescales will depend on whether you have already achieved your Bronze award or if you have gone straight into the Silver Award.

If you have already achieved your Bronze Award then you are required to complete:

- Volunteering section: 6 months

- Physical and Skills section: one section for 3 months and one section for 6 months. You can choose which.

- Expedition: 3 days/2 nights

If you would like to do cookery for your skills section but are unsure whether you would like to do it for 3 or 6 months you can sign up for 3 months and always extend to 6 months later on.

If you did not do the Bronze Award, you must undertake a further 6 months in either the Volunteering or the longer of the Physical or Skills Section.  If you chose to extend Skills you would need to do our 12 month course. 

GOLD AWARD

The timescales will depend on whether you have already achieved your Silver award or if you have gone straight into the Gold Award.

- Volunteering Section: 12 months

- Physical and Skills Sections: one Section for 6 months and one Section for 12 months. You can choose which.

- Expedition section: 4 days / 3 nights

- Residential Section: 5 days / 4 nights

If you did not do Silver (even if you have done Bronze) you must undertake a further 6 months in either the Volunteering or the longer of the Physical or Skills sections.  If you would like to extend your Skill, you would need our 18 month course.

As a general rule no - our courses are fairly priced for the quality we offer and the personal experience that our students receive. In order to keep our courses affordable for everyone we do not give discounts on an individual basis. We do, however, have 3 discounts:

- Returning student discount: many of our students return as they work towards the next level of DofE. You will have received a returning student discount when you received a copy of your Assessor's report and course certificate.  If anything you can't find it just email us.

- Sibling discount: we often have siblings completing the course at the same time or younger siblings signing up having seen an older sibling complete the course. Do drop us an email and we will send you the discount code.

- School / youth entity discounts: if you have some friends who would also like to complete the course or you are a teacher or DofE Leader who is recommending our course to your young people (thank you) please email us or ask your DofE Leader to email us so that we can send your school / entity a discount code.