The role of the school science laboratory, once taken for granted as verification of taught theory using prescribed ('cookbook' to critics) practical activities, has become less clear since the emergence of the 'inquiry' paradigm in which the school laboratory would appear to become a make-believe science research laboratory. But a school science laboratory is a teaching laboratory in which pupils, as rank novices, apply set basic scientific procedures. This approach, moreover, emulates professional science (in medical laboratories, industrial laboratories, etc.), which routinely involves the meticulous application of standard procedures.