`The Cream Team': An ethnography of BTEC National Diploma (Catering and Hotel Management) students in a tertiary college.

The article presents an ethnographic study of vocational students in a tertiary college in England who intend entering a service industry which expanded in the 1980s and is predicted to expand into the next decade. The paper focuses on a social class and gender mixed group of mainly 17-19 year-old Business and Technology Education Council National Diploma students in the second year of their course at "Gastronomic Tertiary College" in a northern heavy-industrial city. The field-work was conducted throughout the academic year 1988-1989, the author being a participant observer with a group of about 20 students throughout their time in college. The majority were from working-class backgrounds, mostly skilled social class III, and the minority from social class II. The data are derived from recorded individual and group "conversations with a purpose" held during the college day, together with field notes. Although the concept of correspondence has been invoked, it has been argued that the dynamics of reproduction take place on contradictory cultural terrain, characterised by contestation and conflict, no matter how latent and corporate.