The River Tern runs through the market town of Market Drayton in north Shropshire. It is not a famous river. It does not appear in guidebooks. But it is, in all the ways that matter ecologically, a functioning chalk-influenced stream with a healthy invertebrate community, kingfisher sightings, and occasional otter activity in its upper reaches.
In October 2023, a Year 6 class from a primary school in Market Drayton visited the Tern as part of the Riverside Schools programme. Their teacher, Mr David Osei, had booked the field day after seeing a presentation at a regional CPD event. Several of the twenty-six pupils had lived within a five-minute walk of the river their entire lives. None of them had ever been to it.
The session was led by Alder & Otter Education Officer Jess Fairweather. The pupils worked in rotating groups of six, completing four activity stations over three hours: water chemistry testing using field kits, macroinvertebrate sampling using nets and identification charts, riparian vegetation survey using quadrats, and a bankside walk with species identification cards.
One group found a water shrimp — a clean-water indicator species. Another recorded three species of stonefly larva, which Jess explained were only found in well-oxygenated water. A third group, testing water chemistry, recorded dissolved oxygen at 94 per cent of saturation — “almost perfect,” Jess told them.
“One girl spent forty minutes trying to identify every invertebrate she found,” Mr Osei told us in his post-visit feedback. “She has not shown that level of focus on anything else this year. I think she is going to be a scientist.”
The class received a data pack after the visit showing how their results compared to the site’s five-year average. Their results were good. The river is in good health. They know it because they measured it themselves.