CALLINGTON Community College Space Centre has bid farewell to it's director and founder Mike Grocott after his 14 years of teaching there.

A quiz night was held to celebrate the work of the centre and to reunite former students from the past 12 years to say goodbye to Mike. Some travelled from as far as Birmingham for the evening and another student returned from a year's travelling around Europe only the night before.

It is one of a series of events held annually to raise funds towards sending students on a trip to America to work for ten days in the Space Centres in Texas and Florida. A trip to Russia to compete in the International Space Olympics was another opportunity given by the centre to develop student's new skills.

Mike has been appointed principal of the country's first Space Studio School in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and will be leaving Callington at the end of July.

The United Kingdom Space Agency and the European Space Agency are both supporting the new school which will have a curriculum designed to develop the skills needed for the growing space sector in the UK.

Mike said: 'The support that I and the staff at the space centre have had from the schools across Cornwall, Devon and beyond for the past 13 years has been fantastic, and I will be sad to leave the centre, however, this new college will allow me to make a real difference in ensuring that students from the UK are fully able to compete for jobs in this exciting industry both in the UK and abroad.'