GPS Tracking for Duke of Edinburgh Award Expeditions

The cost. There were options out there that seemed like overkill, good if you're going to the Himalayas but do we really want a chopper or mountain rescue to turn up every time a student presses the SOS button? No. 

And we couldn't afford the subscriptions that paid for those kinds of services. 

Other options allowed us to rent devices, but it was all too expensive in the long run. We worked out that we would be spending £5,000 a year just to support our Bronze expeditions, and needless to say, budgets are too tight for that.

We were recommended MeiliGPS by another school, which was also based in Oxfordshire and had worked with Meili to develop the system to support their DofE Expeditions.

The first thing we realised was that we could equip all of our groups with a MeiliGPS tracker for only £79 per group, and that thereafter we would own the tracker outright. So, no tracker rental costs ever again! 

The second thing we realised was that the trackers' subscriptions were both reasonable, at £7.99 a month, and crucially could be paused with no fees being charged to start the subscription again. 

That meant that we could turn the subscriptions on in March and October and have them turned off in between, which translated into a huge cost saving for us.

The students really appreciate the security of knowing that they can seek help from us in the event of an incident. 

And they appreciate the additional freedom that results as DofE leaders let them roam free, with less intrusive monitoring. 

From a Duke of Edinburgh Award leader’s perspective it means we really can let them go, and still react quickly, as a team, if they signal for help.

GPS trackers are not a replacement for safety protocols, but do allow us to mitigate the risk of a group getting lost or not being able to contact their leaders in the event of an emergency. 

Phones often work on Bronze expeditions, nearer to schools, but we have found that MeiliGPS trackers can still communicate back to base when phones can’t. 

Students tell us that they activated the SOS on their Meili tracker because their brick phone didn’t have a signal.  

We risk assess scenarios: a group getting lost, and medical incidents such as an injury, or a student having an allergic reaction, or becoming ill. 

The SOS signal from the tracker alerts both me and all of the other expedition organisers and volunteers via the app. 

We then mitigate the risk of the incident by working as a team to respond to it. 

The app works offline too, with downloaded maps, so even without a signal, we know we can mountain bike or hike to the location of the incident. 

From a risk assessment perspective, once you start using MeiliGPS trackers, you can't not use them! 

MeiliGPS was the only GPS tracking solution that we found that had a robust process for granting and removing third party access to tracker data. 

The Meili app is a secure iOS and Android based app. And the Meili Sharing Centre within the app allows us to choose who sees what, and for how long. 

The other GPS tracking solutions we looked at appeared to be web-based only and they allowed the sharing of hyperlinks that could enable anyone in possession of the hyperlink to have access to tracker data: including location and status. 

This potentially meant that tracker data, shared insecurely, would allow a third party to see where our children were camping out, alone. 

This was simply unacceptable from a safeguarding perspective and the reason why, as a school, MeiliGPS was the only viable GPS tracking solution that met our Safeguarding standards. 

I think there are three main lessons we have learned:

1. Make sure that the trackers you invest in align with your safeguarding policy.
   
   Any tracker that allows locations to be shared via a shareable hyperlink should NOT, in our opinion, be used in a DofE/Scout/School setting.
   
   You should have an audit trail that shows you what access was granted to volunteers, and also that confirms that the access was revoked when the expedition ended. This is crucial from a safeguarding perspective.
   
   
2. Beware of subscription costs and add-ons.
   
   We found that many solutions have a headline monthly fee, but in some cases, this needed to be paid annually in advance, and in others, where a “flexible” subscription was available, there was also a reactivation fee that was three times the monthly fee.
   
   One advantage of Meili is that the subs really are flexible, and we can pause them at any time without penalty.
   
   
3. Make sure that the solution you go with has good Group Management features.
   
   In the past, we had to put volunteers on checkpoints all day, and it became harder and harder to find volunteers willing to sit under a tree all day waiting for students to pass by.
   
   Now, using MeiliGPS, we know where groups are, and we can see when they are approaching a checkpoint and redirect volunteers as required. This has meant that in effect we can organise expeditions with more students and fewer parent volunteers.