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Put simply, a 2:1 in English Lit has more cultural value in most British settings than a distinction in an engineering HND. It is this, as much as anything, experts say, that has led to the failure of successive governments to invest properly in colleges, and has driven the skills shortages we’ve seen for so long in the trades. It’s a genuine outlier.įor generations, educationists have described despairingly the failure to achieve “parity of esteem” between vocational and academic qualifications. Catering and cooking is pretty much the only sector in which colleges achieve this level of perceived elitism in the popular consciousness. Only it’s not a dreaming spire these culinary gods are approving of it’s any one of the hundreds of perfectly ordinary further education colleges churning out vocational qualifications every year, often in the toughest of circumstances. The look they give each other is akin to how merchant bankers might respond when an intern mentions in passing that they went to Brasenose, Oxford. If the answer comes back something like, “I went to college to learn the classics,” Messrs Galetti and Wareing will turn to each other and nod approvingly. If a competitor seems to know what they’re doing, one of the judges will ask them where they trained. Not content with interrogating the technique of each new participant on MasterChef : The Professionals from a proximity that would likely challenge most social distancing rules, the pair then probe their victims’ life stories. Monica and Marcus – the terrifying, but cool as hell, double-headed hydra of kitchen perfectionism – welcome a new victim into the studio and set them an apparently simple cooking task to complete in an insanely small amount of time. Marcus Wareing (left), Gregg Wallace and Monica Galetti, hosts of ‘MasterChef: The Professionals’ - Shine/PA