Ed Sheeran has criticised the government for supporting bankers over bands.

The Suffolk-raised singer-songwriter, who went to a state school in his hometown, spoke about his feelings on how the government have cut funding to the arts on Theo Von’s podcast.

He said: “I’ve been doing probably for the last seven years stuff with music in high schools because in my area, so basically in 2017/ 2018, my old music teacher came to me and he was like, ‘look, the government that is currently in charge, do not value art at all.. arts, drama, music.’ And they cut all the funding for comprehensive high schools.

“So my music teacher came to me and was going, I think they had to share between art, music and drama, like £700 per year for all three subjects. So I started funding that at my local high school. And then you see a massive uptick in kids doing production, kids doing songwriting, kids doing this.”

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Sheeran added: “I built a recording studio there. There’s loads of proper instruments that aren’t broken and you just see the school getting better at music. So then I started doing that in the county that I’m from. And we’ve just now changed it to do it nationwide. And I’m now visiting more high schools and places that really need music funding.

“And you see what a difference it makes too. Because I’m not an academic person and in the real world I would be viewed as stupid, but I excelled at music and therefore people think that I’m good at something.”

He went on to further criticise the government for focusing on maths and banking rather than the arts.

Sheeran continued: “We’re famous for music with The Beatles. We’re famous for painting. Damien Hurst. We’re famous for movies. You’ve got Danny Boyle coming out of here, Christopher Nolan.

“And the government is just putting importance on maths and banking and we make arms, but no one is proud that we make arms and no one is proud that our banking’s really good, but they are proud of our art. And so for a government to be like the art doesn’t matter, where do you think the arts’ going to come from? So the next part of my career is getting proper, proper funding and art, music, drama back into schools and actually Ireland do a very good job of it.”

He also said that if Labour win the general election on Thursday (July 4), he believes support for state schools will improve.

Sheeran added: “I’m doing what I can to get funding for it. But I think getting the new government will be better at it. But the thing that, that’s kind of what I want to segue into is music education. It worked so well for me and I know it can work so well for other kids. I’m kind of proof that normal kids can just pick up guitars, work hard and do it.”

Meanwhile, it was recently confirmed that the singer-songwriter was the most played artist of 2023, beating out close competition from Taylor Swift.

Last week, he also teamed up with Hozier at Pinkpop to perform ‘Work Song’.