Steve McQueen’s ambitious project to photograph every Year 3 pupil in London is based on the idea of another artist who started working in schools 14 years ago, a former British Council director has claimed.

Andrea Rose has questioned the originality of the Academy Award winning film director's venture, in which he is hoping to create a single large-scale installation at Tate Britain using the faces of thousands of seven-year-old pupils.

Ms Rose, who was the British Council's head of visual arts for 20 years before she stepped down in 2014, said that she thought that the idea was based on another project by Julian Germain.

But the Tate dismissed Ms Rose's notion, first aired in The Art Newspaper, and insisted McQueen is making a "very different" piece of work.

Mr Germain, who is based in Northumberland, said he started photographing schoolchildren in their classrooms as part of a project called “The Future Is Ours”, which he launched in 2004.