It comes with a £600 grant to support his studies

Miss Lowson, STEM co-ordinator and teacher of Science at The Cotswold School, said she was immensely proud of Jacob’s achievements, as she presented him with his certificate and Arkwright badge:

“It’s a very prestigious award, which opens lots of career options for him. It is the second Arkwright scholarship that a student at our school has been awarded in recent years.

“Winning it is testament to Jacob’s passion for engineering and dedication to a rigorous and lengthy application process. I look forward to seeing how he builds on this success and recognition into the future.”

The highly competitive Arkwright selection process involved creation of a project, an online application and virtual interview, designed to assess students’ engineering knowledge as well as key life skills like leadership and creative thinking. A further £400 is awarded to the school.

The project Jacob submitted was for a smart garden bench, able to connect with local weather forecasts online and communicate with the householder if the garden needs watering. It will even carry out the job and relay camera footage of the refreshed garden to its owner!

Jacob’s interests are predominantly in electrical and software engineering, but he is curious about all forms of engineering. He has enjoyed learning about the scope of the sector through Smallpiece’s online courses, including in biomedical, eco-battery energy and automotive engineering.

The Smallpiece Trust, which administers the Arkwright Engineering Scholarship, received almost 1,300 applications from students across the country. Jacob is among fewer than 300 exceptional budding young engineers who have been given the award so far this year.