text: Top Fashion Schools in the UK: Bracing for Brexit | BoF
  LONDON, United Kingdom — UK schools topped BoF's 2016 global fashion school rankings, with Central Saint Martins in the number one spot at both BA and MA level (having also ranked first at BA level last year), and Kingston University in second place at BA level. Eleven UK institutions made the ranking, with three UK schools in the top 10 at BA level, the most of any country in our survey.
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  Indeed, the UK's leading fashion education institutions all receive public funding, and comprise a mix of arts colleges like Edinburgh College of Art — the UK's only ranked school outside of England — fashion-specific institutions like London College of Fashion, and general universities such as the University of Brighton, which was the highest-ranking UK school outside London.
  "Brexit is a huge challenge to fashion education," says Fabio Piras, course director of MA Fashion at Central Saint Martins. "It could affect numbers and the insecurity a student might have to come from an EU country to this country. I don't know what's going to happen to fees."
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  Having fewer EU students would also be a blow to UK fashion education's talent pool and could diminish student diversity — where UK schools scored above average in BoF's ranking. Eleven percent of London College of Fashion students are non-UK EU nationals. "They bring different skillsets, a different way of thinking, that's all really important," says Frances Corner, head of London College of Fashion.
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  But while the spectre of Brexit looms large, UK fashion schools will continue to evolve, as new technologies — from fabric development, to robotics — change the nature of fashion employment. "To produce designers in the most conservative and traditional sense would be a mistake," says Piras, adding that schools must redefine their curricula to "produce creative people that can perform at all levels, not necessarily in the fashion design studio, but in other areas of the fashion business or not the fashion business at all."