The JCB Academy is a non-selective co-educational secondary school within the English University Technical College programme, in Rocester, Staffordshire, England.

[1] : 7 His privately sponsored school for 540 pupils between 14 and 19 opened under the academy program with the educational support of Staffordshire County Council.

[4] Bamford's ideas were in tune with government thinking - the academy was established with the support of senior business leaders adding their names as sponsors.

[1] The government was aware that a large number of children and young people were underachieving against their benchmark test, or dropping out of school completely.

People in industry, with top academic degrees would be able to sort out the schools and get good A levels where teachers had failed.

The sponsors had a two-day residential where they did team building and established aims and objective, defined industries potential role and started on curriculum design.

The teaching staff helped then understand what was feasible, then integrated the topic into the academic syllabus so it complied with the National Curriculum requirements.

They were concerned about the paucity of government funding to secondary schools and to engineering classes in particular, they suggested that without some external income the academy would fail.

[1]: 10  Having observed it from the inside, the partners had seen how complex teaching was, the barriers and difficulties created by a continually changing intrusive central government education policies.

"[11] They go on to appropriate education or take advantage of school's close link with a wide range business partners, and take up career opportunities there.

Attainment in the sixth form has historically been relatively weak and remained below national averages for 2017 and 2018, particularly in mathematics with better outcomes in engineering and business.