Award & Incentive Schemes

Scottish Orienteering administers several personal performance and incentive schemes to encourage members to participate and develop their orienteering skills.

Star Awards

The Star Award scheme is Scottish Orienteering’s personal performance award scheme aimed at encouraging and recognising skills development. The scheme has 4 different levels which will develop orienteering skills in a structured and progressive format. The levels are broadly aligned with the British Orienteering Step system and colour schemes:
Level 1 – white / Technical Difficulty 1
Level 2 – yellow / TD 2
Level 3 – orange / TD3
Level 4 – light green / TD4

The Level 1 Star Award can be achieved through participating in orienteering at school, after-school clubs, or youth groups such as scouts. This award should be achievable after a block of 4-6 orienteering sessions. Levels 2, 3 and 4 usually require participation in coached club training sessions. For each level of Star Award a progression document is used by coaches to monitor participants’ development against a range of skills linked to the systematic orienteering framework of “Plan, Direction, Picture, Distance and Mental”.

The detailed content of Star Awards can be modified to suit differing needs of participants, and / or the environment in which they are orienteering, through working 1:1 with a club coach or teacher. In this way all youngsters can be motivated to participate and encouraged to develop orienteering skills to achieve their personal potential, regardless of any additional support needs, physical or learning difficulties that they may have.

The Scottish Orienteering Star Award Scheme has been recently revamped (Apr 2021). Level 1 and 2 Star Award resources for coaches are available here. Revised Level 3 and 4 resources to follow shortly!

Participation Badges

We like to encourage members to take part, and run a badge scheme to award members when they complete a number of orienteering courses. There are badges for 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 courses completed. Participation certificates can be downloaded here file file https://www.scottish-orienteering.org/download/57/schools-teachers/20740/soa-participation-certificates-2.pdf

Colour Coded Awards

Orienteering courses are colour-coded according to length and technical difficulty (read more here). We award members with badges according to the colour courses they complete at events, and therefore how they further develop skill level.

For White, Yellow and Orange courses, you can compete on your own or as a pair.

  • To gain a White badge, you simply have to complete 3 White courses.
  • For a badge on all other courses you need to complete 3 courses within 50% of the winner’s time, or finish in the top 50% of the finishers.

British Orienteering Incentive Schemes

British Orienteering runs the performance based National Badge Scheme, as well as two incentive schemes:

  • the Navigation Challenge
  • the Racing Challenge

Visit the British Orienteering website – www.britishorienteering.org.uk/page/incentives – for more details.