A huge congratulations is in order for one of our in-house watchmakers Harry, who has been accepted into the British School of Watchmaking.

Harry will be making the move to Manchester in January after being accepted onto the WOSTEP 1800 Hour Programme (CFC 3), and is only 1 of 8 people on this year's course. This course is recognised by the Convention Patronale (CP) as being equivalent to the Swiss CFC 3 years watch repair educational program and centres around preparing the student to provide routine service of standard type watches (both mechanical and electronic) through the identification and exchange of defective components in supervised roles. Graduates from the programme can be expected to be competent in encasing; movement exchange; servicing (quartz, manual, automatic and basic chronograph movements) and quality control.

After being deemed suitable for the course upon applying, Harry then sat an assessment with the school which consisted of an interview and a theory test. After passing with flying colours, Harry was accepted onto the course for the beginning of 2021.

When asked, Harry said: "I’m thrilled to be going off to The British School of Watchmaking in January. With everything that has gone on in 2020 it’s nice to know that I will definitely be going. It’s been really exciting preparing for it over the past 18 months, and now all the hard work has paid off"

Founded in 2004 by Gordon Bryan and Nick Towndrow, who recognised that there was a shortage of qualified watchmakers to service the growing number of fine and complicated mechanical watches in the UK, the school welcomed its first cohort of students onto the WOSTEP 3000 Hour Course on the 4th September 2006 and expanded in 2011 to take on 8 students per year, compared to 6 the previous years. Following the successes of the WOSTEP 3000 Hour Course, the WOSTEP 1800 Hour Course was introduced in January 2018, making it the first school in Europe to offer this new industry recognised training programme.

With support from some of the world's top watch brands including Rolex, Patek Phillipe and Breitling, the British School of Watchmaking is the ideal environment for Harry to hone in of his watchmaking skills and expertise.

Congratulations Harry, and we look forward to welcoming you back to W.Bruford on completion.