Jim Wade

The GBP22 million (USD35.3 million) JCB Academy will be officially opened by Their Royal Highnesses, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall next week.

Prince Charles and Carmilla Parker-Bowles will visit the JCB Academy in Mill Street, Rocester on Friday, 18 February. They will tour the building, meet staff and students and unveil a plaque marking the official opening of the facility.

Academy principal Jim Wade says the school is delighted about the visit. "It will be a wonderful occasion which staff and pupils are already eagerly awaiting."

The JCB Academy is the first school of its kind in the UK for the education of 14- to 19-year-olds with a core focus on engineering and is designed to produce the engineers and business leaders of the future. The first 170 students commenced their studies in September 2010 and the school will eventually house 540 students from Staffordshire and Derbyshire. JCB says the intake for September 2011 is already oversubscribed.

Like other UK state schools, the academy is funded by the Department of Education but, as a main sponsor, JCB contributed 10% of the capital and donated the mill in which it is based.

The idea for the academy took root in the northern summer of 2006 with a government feasibility study. It has been created in a mill dating from 1781 and has been equipped with over GBP1 million (USD1.6 million) of modern engineering equipment, including the only plasma cutter - a machine tool commonly used in industry - to be based in a UK school.

The JCB Academy's partners include Toyota, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Bombardier, Network Rail, National Grid, Rexroth Bosch Group, Zytek Automotive, IET, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Harper Adams University College, The Royal Academy of Engineering and Parker Vansco. The partners set engineering tasks for the students, who complete them alongside their maths, English, science and German subjects.