QuarryEd Home - An Education and Careers Resource for teachers and students

QuarryEd Home - An Education and Careers Resource for teachers and students

 Teacher Zone - Access an assortment of education resources and information for the A level curriculum Student Zone - Find fascinating facts and information resources for your studies at school, college and home Careers Zone - Discover how you can have excellent employment prospects and a superb salary! About QuarryEd - An education and careers resource for teachers and students QuarryEd Sitemap
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Responsibility - Find out more about the extractive industry's environmental and social performance News - Updates about what's going on in the extractive industry Visits and events - Find details of active and dormant quarry and mine sites that you can visit, education training events linked to the earth sciences and open days for universities      
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Fieldstudies - Discover how both active and dormant extractive sites offer fascinating fieldstudy opportunities

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fieldstudies

Each quarry and mine in the UK, both operational and dormant, is a potential site for fieldwork that can offer fascinating fieldstudy opportunities for a range of subject areas, such as:

Rocks and processes
Environmental impacts
Surveying and mathematics
Ecosystem dynamics
Local history/geography/geology
Biological recording and surveying

There are around 2,000 working quarries and 160 mines in Great Britain. Most operational quarries and mines today work closely with the local community and many have open days and sites visits. During these visits, the working site is open to the public and schools for a supervised tour to learn more about the industries operations, its products and the geology of the area.

Former quarry and mine workings also offer fascinating study sites for fieldwork; mosaics of habitats are created either by nature alone through natural succession or by managed restoration schemes and many offer rare opportunities to study areas of geological interest that would have otherwise remained hidden. Many old extractive workings are accessible to the public as nature or geological conservation areas.

See the events and visits page for more details of how your school or college can use extractive sites for fieldwork opportunities.


Health and safety

Working quarries and mines take issues of safety extremely seriously at all of their sites. Any site visits organised for the public and school groups are thoroughly assessed for any potential risks and are arranged so that they are safe in accordance with statutory and company regulations. However, as with many industries, all sites have the potential to be dangerous if guidelines and advice that are set by the quarry or mine are not followed carefully.

Great effort is made to leave dormant sites in a safe condition, but the safety of each site will vary greatly according to the type of its after use. For that reason, it is important to contact the site owner or manager before accessing a dormant site for fieldstudy work to make sure any potential risks have been assessed.
Where are they now? - Learn more about the lives of people who work in the extractive industry todayDig this! - Read about cutting edge mining and quarrying projects in the UK and throughout the worldFieldstudies - Discover how both active and dormant extractive sites offer fascinating fieldstudy opportunitiesWhat's yours is mined! - Find out how much the extractive industry underpins each of our daily lives