Quora has some very interesting info on Ed Sheeran:
Some of the comments:
By his own admission, Sheeran wasn’t academically inclined. His father criticised his lack of application. But much as he’s close to his parents, he wasn’t listening.
“I was quite a cynical kid. I couldn’t see how learning trigonometry affected what I wanted to do. Whereas when I sat and learnt a song I was thinking, ‘I don’t know what that chord is.’ Or, ‘That melody’s cool.’ So I’d want to know how to sing and play that. I always wanted to do something artistic. You can’t teach someone how to be creative, you have to let them discover how to do it for themselves.”
Aged 17, Sheeran persuaded his parents to let him leave school and move to London. With a rucksack and a guitar but no firm prospects, he must have had a good case to make. “I guess the case was, ‘All I want to do is play shows. And if I live there I can do one every night. Whereas if I stay here I can do one a week, at best.’”
No he wasn’t. Ed has said in numerous interviews that he hated school. He hated wasting time learning stuff he knew he was never going to use so he didn’t apply himself. He planned on a career of some sort in the music industry from a young age. He ultimately dropped out of school at age 16 earning his GED.
Once moving to London he studied at access to music: the music and media college. Ed studied on the Artist Development course in London, where he learned a set of skills which has benefited him in his growing music career while at the same time making him eligible for a housing grant for a period of time while he was a student.Ed Sheeran: ‘I got quite a few death threats early on’ | Ed Sheeran | The Guardian