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In many schools around the world, laboratories are a normal part of learning. One school might even have several labs: a science lab, an IT lab, and a language lab. Spaces where students learn beyond textbooks and theories and put these lessons into practice.  
For science education in particular, laboratories play an important role in helping students connect theory with real-world experience. Through experiments and observation, students learn to test ideas and better understand how things work. These spaces and experiences can help develop curiosity, analytical thinking, and problem-solving skills that students carry with them long after they have left school. 
But in Timor-Leste, this kind of learning environment was largely unavailable until recent years. For many teachers and students, science was taught almost entirely through theory, with teachers explaining concepts that students had no means of seeing, touching, or testing for themselves. The absence of laboratories may seem like a small detail, but for science education, it shapes how students experience learning. 
“When we first started teaching, we only taught theory without practice,” Apolinari Freitas Belo Ximenes, a science teacher who has taught at EBC 30 de Agosto, in Dili for more than two decades. “We learned science without laboratory practice ourselves, and when we started teaching, there were no tools or equipment available.”
Similar experiences were shared by teachers in other parts of the country. “Through theory alone, students didn’t always understand clearly what we were explaining,” said physics teacher Fransisco Munis Dias from Nino Coni Santana Secondary School, Lautém Municipality. 
Timor-Leste is a country with serious ambitions for its future. Since independence, it has been building its institutions, training its workforce, and investing in the generation that will carry its development forward. Central to that vision is the recognition that a sustainable economy — one that can grow beyond its current dependence on oil revenues — will need engineers, medical professionals, researchers, and innovators. These are people who begin, in many cases, as students sitting in a science class, wondering how things work. 
To help address this gap, UNESCO, with support from the Government of Japan and Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), supported the establishment of science and mathematics laboratories in schools across Timor-Leste, alongside teacher training and supplementary learning materials. Since 2017, ten laboratories have been established in municipalities across the country, creating dedicated spaces where students can engage directly with science through practical learning. 
Today, some schools hold laboratory activities every week, with students conducting experiments, observing chemical reactions, using microscopes, and preparing for science fairs and competitions.  
Teachers also noticed changes in how students communicated during science lessons. According to Apolinari, students who were once hesitant to explain scientific concepts in class became more confident after participating in laboratory activities.  
With theory alone, students were often hesitant when explaining lessons. But in the laboratory, they become more confident and more active in explaining what they observe.
Eight years after the first laboratory was established, students and teachers from across Timor-Leste gathered for the annual national science competition, where students presented experiments and demonstrated projects developed through practical learning. Among the judges was a UNESCO representative, witnessing firsthand how science education in the country had evolved over the years. 
And for many teachers, who had been part of the journey, the event reflected something larger than the competition itself. Students who once learned science only through theory were now confidently explaining experiments, testing ideas, and presenting their work publicly. 
“Before, we practiced in a very small room with very little to work with,” said Antero Martins Da Costa Fernandes, from a chemistry teacher who had been running informal science activities with students long before an official laboratory existed at his school.
Now students come with excitement, especially when preparing for competitions. Seeing them enjoy science and discover things for themselves is what makes this work meaningful.
That excitement is only growing. Students who have come through these laboratories are now making their way into universities across Timor-Leste, carrying with them experiences that many previous generations did not have access to. 
I hope that through these experiments, through this practice, students can find new knowledge and new things, and the encouragement to keep going — to continue learning forward.
This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
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