Award winners earn their day in the sun

ACHIEVEMENT: Hundreds of young people honoured after completing their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme

classics, geography and maths, all three recommended the awards to other young people, with Gregor saying it taught them how to stick with something.

Also keeping it in the family were twins Duncan and Scott Fulton, 18, who have just left Monifieth High School.

Appropriately on the 70th anniversary of the NHS, Duncan is heading to Dundee to study medicine. Scott is going to Dundee where he will be studying applied computing.

Crosshill teenager Rhona Munro, 19, completed her gold award two years ago while a pupil at Beath High School in Cowdenbeath.

Now a biomedical sciences student at Edinburgh University, the highlight of Rhona’s gold award was taking part in dog sledding in Canada.

Every year the initiative, established by the earl’s father Prince Philip in 1956, develops more than 430,000 young people for life and work in the UK.

The awards are delivered in more than 700 centres across Scotland, including schools, youth clubs and prisons, and are supported by more than 80 partners and around 3,500 adult volunteers.

Since it started, more than six million people have taken part, achieving in excess of 2.7 million awards.

In 2017-18, nearly 21,000 young people in Scotland enrolled in a programme, with an estimated one in every six of third year high school pupils joining in. And nearly 11,000 young Scots achieved either a bronze, silver or gold award.

Yesterday nearly 900 faced one last test as they were presented with their gold awards – braving the searing heat in the palace gardens.