Stormzy, the Brit-award-winning grime musician, has launched a scholarship for two black students per year to attend the University of Cambridge.

The Stormzy Scholarship will completely fund two students’ tuition fees and maintenance grants for up to four years of an undergraduate course. It will run this year and in 2019, funding four students overall.

Stormzy himself will fund one scholarship, while the second will be funded by Youtube Music, who pledged their support after hearing of his plans.

The announcement today comes as students across the UK receive their A-Level results, predictably pushing the #alevelresults2018 Twitter trend to the top.

Analysis from Varsity in 2017 showed acceptance rates for black applicants in the past decade has averaged less than half the overall rate. The 2017 admissions cycle also showed clear signs of racial disparities continuing to affect Cambridge admissions.

In May last year, photos of 14 black male Cambridge students posing in St John’s College’s New Court went viral, gaining over 5,700 likes, 1,200 shares, and also attracting national attention – featuring on the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Buzzfeed.

The photos, posted by the Cambridge University African Caribbean Society (ACS) were intended to highlight the fact that only 15 black male undergraduates were accepted by Cambridge in 2015. The post was accompanied by a quote from Robinson College student Dami Adebayo: “Young black men don’t grow up thinking they’ll make it here. They should.”

Earlier this year in June, more than 50 black female Cambridge students posed for a photo in front of Senate House to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first black woman graduating from Cambridge.

At the time, ACS released an open letter, writing that signatories wanted the photos “to highlight the abundance of black women who are thriving at the University 70 years on from the graduation of the first black woman at Cambridge in 1948”, and to “honour and shed light on the legacies of the black women who paved the way within the University and in their later life.”

2016, just two years ago, marked the first year in which Cambridge accepted more black men than Etonians, with 22 and 21 students accepted respectively.

Speaking at his old school in South London this morning, Stormzy announced the launch of the scholarship, and said: “We’re a minority, the playing ground isn’t level for us and it’s vital that all potential students are given the same opportunity.”