Emma Bridgewater: Why we are facing a skills crisis
EDUCATION EDITOR HER colourful crockery has become a staple in households across Middle England and she has been dubbed “the first lady of British homeware”.
As one of the biggest ceramics manufacturers based entirely in the UK, Emma Bridgewater has become a champion for British industry and an advocate for the need to inspire future generations of leaders in manufacturing.
However, rather than developing courses that train up the next generation of leaders in manufacturing, universities and colleges are focused on attracting foreign students, she said.
“A lot of vocational courses around manufacturing are evaporating – we are not training the future captains of industry,” she told
“I think that education is responding enormously to the appetite among foreign students to come here. Foreign students outnumber [British students], particularly at arts schools in London.
“What I’ve heard my children’s contemporaries talk about is that courses are not really being tailored for them, they are increasingly tailored to foreign students. I think we are responding to foreign students queuing up to get a British education.”
Mrs Bridgewater, 51, said she is “not interested in protectionism”, adding: “It is an amazing signal that people are flocking to train here, to learn here. But alongside it what are we doing for our own future? What is our plan for our own manufacturing sector?”
She said the Government had not thought about the consequences of “turning its back” on the manufacturing sector, adding: “I think there is a massive snobbery and a group forgetting about where we have come from.”
Last week the Chancellor unveiled the biggest overhaul of post-16 education in 70 years with a multibillion pound drive to improve vocational training.
Philip Hammond announced that the Government will put technical education on an equal footing with academic studies with new “T-levels”, the technical version of A-levels, funded by more than £500million a year.
But Mrs Bridgewater, who has been held up by the Prime Minister as an example of how British business will thrive in a post-Brexit world, said that enthusing young people about manufacturing must start much earlier than when they are 16.
Mrs Bridgewater, whose factory in Stoke-on-Trent regularly welcomes children for tours, said that more teachers should take their classes on school trips to local factories.
She said: “A factory is one of the most positive things and hugely inspiring. We need children to be enthused about engineering and we are signally failing in that.”
She added that in schools and universities there is an “absolute blankness and a sense that what I’m doing is so irrelevant. We need to sort out what we do about practical education. We’ve lost track of how to envisage and project practical careers”.
Mrs Bridgewater set up her ceramics business in 1985. Her cheerful designs are thought to be a personal favourite of Theresa May, who gave out her mugs to Cabinet ministers for Christmas presents.