Research published by the Social Market Foundation has shown that students accepted to university from working-class backgrounds are more likely to hold a BTEC qualification than their peers.

After failing my GCSEs as a working-class 16-year-old, it was a BTEC in Performing Arts that got me back into education and ultimately to university.

At Education Questions today I asked Alex Burghart, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Apprenticeships and Skills, if he agreed with me and Labour colleagues that the decision to hastily remove BTEC funding makes a mockery of the Government’s claims to be ‘levelling up’ in education.