A TV scientist hailed a Didcot school’s new science labs as the best in the country.

University of Oxford naturalist Dr George McGavin cut the ribbon yesterday to open St Birinus School’s £4.8m science block, which houses 13 state-of-the-art laboratories.

The new building has ground source heating from 14 underground bore holes, and video cameras to screen experiments on big screens in classrooms.

Dr McGavin, who appears regularly on BBC’s The One Show and was seen discovering new species in The Lost World of the Volcano, said: “I’m just blown away by these laboratories. I think they are the best science labs I have seen in the UK – it almost makes me want to be back at school again.”

He used the opening ceremony to call for more young people to study science at university.

He said: “The problem is that people think a good general university degree is something like English, but it’s really Biology.

“There’s so much out there that we don’t know.

“I know art, music and literature are exciting, but they don’t provide the answers to the problems we face in the next 100 years. The answers are all based in science.”

Headmaster Chris Bryan said: “This area is likely to be the centre of scientific research in the UK, not dissimilar to Silicon Valley in the USA. Didcot is going to be at the heart of that, we want to be part of it as well.”