Kathryn

I knew I wanted to teach the moment I stepped into my mum's classroom during the school holidays. She was a teaching assistant at the local primary, and I was helping her put up displays when a group of Year 6 kids came in for extra maths support. Watching their faces change when they finally understood fractions, that sudden spark of comprehension, I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life. Not with primary maths, but with physics. I wanted to show teenagers that the universe makes sense, that the same rules that govern falling apples also govern distant stars.

After finishing my physics degree at Keele, I spent two years working quality control at a ceramics manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent. The pay was decent, the work was steady, but it felt hollow. Every day I checked measurements and wrote reports, while physics teachers across Staffordshire struggled with classes of thirty-five students because there simply weren't enough qualified teachers to go around. My mum would come home with stories from secondary colleagues who were teaching physics without a physics degree, doing their best but knowing the kids deserved better.

In September 2023, I applied for a PGCE in secondary physics at Staffordshire University. The admissions tutor was enthusiastic about my application. My degree was strong, I had relevant work experience, and the interview went well. Then the funding details came through. The physics teacher training bursary had been cut from £28,000 to £15,000 for the West Midlands region. The university's education department told me bluntly: "The Department for Education has reduced our allocation. We simply don't have the budget to support as many trainees."

£15,000 wouldn't cover living costs for the year, let alone tuition fees. I deferred and spent twelve months saving money, working extra shifts at the ceramics plant, watching the local news report teacher shortages in Staffordshire schools while I put aside every spare pound I could manage.

In September 2024, I applied again, this time to Keele University's teacher training programme. Same story: "Treasury constraints mean we can only offer twenty physics training places across the whole region this year." The admissions officer seemed genuinely frustrated. "Last year we had forty places. The year before, fifty. We keep getting told there is no funding."

But when I visited the education faculty for my interview, nothing about that explanation made sense. I found entire computer labs sitting empty, designed specifically for physics simulations. The equipment was modern, the software was up to date, everything was ready for students who would never arrive. The technician, Gary, mentioned they used to run cohorts of forty students through those labs. "Beautiful setup, isn't it?" he said, gesturing at the empty screens. "Shame to see it going to waste."

Down the corridor, I met Emma and James, two unemployed physics graduates from my own year at Keele. Both were desperate to teach but couldn't afford the training without the full bursary. Emma had been working in a call centre for eighteen months. James was stacking shelves while applying for teaching jobs that required qualifications he couldn't afford to get. We stood in that empty corridor, three physics graduates who wanted nothing more than to teach physics, in a building designed to train physics teachers, in a region crying out for physics teachers.

The training capacity was there. The candidates were there. The schools needed us. What wasn't there was the political will to fund the connection.

That's when I started asking different questions. If the people exist, and the building exists, and the need exists, what exactly is it that "there is no money" for? The government that issues the pound chose not to spend the pounds that would connect qualified graduates to empty classrooms. That wasn't an accounting problem. That was a political decision dressed as a mathematical impossibility.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. The real question was never about money. It was about whether the graduates existed, whether the training could be delivered, whether the materials were available. They were. All of them.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. It is the same logic as a household that says "we cannot afford it," except a household does not issue its own currency. The government does. The limit was never the money. The limit was the willingness to spend it into the places and the people who needed it.

I'm still here, still watching, still applying. But I understand now that what happened to me isn't bad luck or unfortunate timing. It's the inevitable result of treating a currency-issuing government like a cash-strapped family. Every empty training place, every unfilled teaching post, every physics class taught by someone without a physics degree traces back to that false belief. And it's happening in every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare.