Junior Johnson has not decided what career path he wants to take, but whatever it will be, this fourth former at the McGrath High School in Linstead, St. Catherine, is sure it will be in the field of science.

He is passionate about Chemistry, Physics and Biology, and is often busy in the Integrated Sciences Lab performing experiments, under the supervision of his teachers Miss Beverette Moore and Miss Althea Ferron. Just ask him about any experiment he performs and he jumps willingly at the opportunity to explain every detail.

“When the two solutions react they produce this bright yellow substance…,” the excited youngster explains to School Principal, Dr Cynthia Anderson and representatives from the Mutual Building Societies Foundation (MBSF) who visited the school recently, as he performed an experiment using lead nitrate and potassium iodide.

Junior, and other students like him, got a booster from the MBSF through its Centres of Excellence programme last month to improve their knowledge and ability to conduct school based science experiments. The Foundation settled half the cost of several pieces of lab equipment, including a multimedia projector, which the school received recently. The total value of the equipment was more than $400,000.

“With the multimedia projector and laptop I am able to get the students’ attention easily,” says Miss Moore. “After lunch they are usually quite tired, but once I am using the computer they will get excited about the lesson,” she says.

In addition to the computer technology, the lab also received a water distiller, several beakers, flasks, test tubes, cylinders, solutions and a plastic model of the human skeleton which assists the students with understanding and replicating the human bone structure.

“It was important for us to have the skeleton because the curriculum now demands that the students should be able to draw a number of the bones in the human body from memory,” Ms. Moore adds.

The new water distiller has also been very helpful Dr. Anderson says. Prior to the Foundation’s contribution the school had to purchase distilled water to use in its experiments. Dr. Anderson who expressed profound appreciation for the distiller noted that “having this piece of equipment will free up more resources to be used in equally important areas.”

The donated equipment is one half of the plan to help boost the school’s performance in the sciences as the Junior School’s Science Lab is also to be refurbished. The lab is currently used only for tutorial classes due to a lack of equipment.

“We want to provide the students the opportunity to explore so that they can find their passion. There are some who are genuinely interested in the subject but don’t perform as well as they should because of the limited resources,” Llewelyn Bailey, MBSF Programme Manager explains.

Through the Centres of Excellence project, the MBSF has been helping six upgraded high schools in rural Jamaica, including McGrath, to transform their academic output by working with them to build an environment that is nurturing and conducive to high achievement.

The Foundation, which is a joint venture of the Jamaica National Building Society and the Victoria Mutual Building Society, invested $100 million in the Centres of Excellence project over a five year period, ending in 2012.