The government’s flagship T levels policy will not help to reduce educational inequalities as they are designed for state school pupils to get “working class jobs”, a hip-hop artist has suggested.

Akala, a rapper and campaigner who founded the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company, was speaking this morning on ITV’s Peston on Sunday.

He was asked about systemic educational inequalities, which he covers in his new book and has discussed with Tes for a feature in this week’s magazine.

The conversation moved to T levels, the government’s newly-reformed technical qualifications being rolled out from 2020.

Akala said parents who spent tens of thousands of pounds sending their children to schools like Eton and Harrow did not want their children to get the same qualifications as those attending comprehensives.

Instead, T levels have been designed for state school pupils to get “working-class jobs”, he added.

His comments follow concerns about the new qualifications being raised by Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham

According to today’s Sunday Times, Professor Smithers said: “Parents should be wary of encouraging their children to take them.

“It must be absolutely clear they will be of value to employers before kids risk their futures.”

Asked about these comments on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, education secretary Damian Hinds did not address them directly.

Instead, he said: “This is a really big reform.

”...We have too many qualifications, which can be confusing for young people and parents to pick their way through, employers don’t always have confidence in them, we haven’t been teaching enough hours in the week and we haven’t had businesses involved in designing them and making sure there’s real workplace training.”

He also insisted the reforms were “proceeding at the proper pace”, despite official advice that they should be delayed.

Mr Hinds was also asked about school funding by Andrew Marr, who said headteachers were “screaming in pain” about their budgets, and pointed out that real-terms per pupil funding had fallen since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

Mr Hinds responded: “I recognise that budgets are tight…It’s also true that there is more money going into schools than ever before.”

He added: “We’re protecting the per-pupil real-terms funding at a time when pupil numbers are rising.”