Duke of Edinburgh International Award Accomplishment and Academic Achievement: A Two Year Study in a Malaysian International School

The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award is a non-formal outdoor education and learning framework that is mentioned frequently and widely in publications, however, little or no literature have compared the impact of DofE completion to students’ academic accomplishment. This study looks at the hours of contribution in the DofE program and individual participants studying in Fairview International School on a two-year time frame and its relationship with their academic achievement on the exit exam. Spearman correlation indicates the hours contributed by the students in the Service section of the DofE could be correlated to their academic accomplishment in English and Business Subjects. Clustering Analysis also indicates that students that contribute similar hours in their DofE also tend to perform similarly in their IGCSE results. Thus, we speculated that DofE could be good intermediary training for the student’s executive functions, and the peer network created pursuing the DofE process also allows them to gain useful social capital that allows them to succeed academically