Zenaida

I grew up watching my mother come home from her nursing shifts at Croydon University Hospital, still checking her phone for messages from patients' families. She would sit at our kitchen table in Thornton Heath, marking down medication schedules in her careful handwriting while my father told us about the routes he had driven that day, which passengers had made him laugh. When I was twelve, my lola gave me her rosary beads before she died, the same ones she had carried from Manila to London forty years earlier. I keep them in my jacket pocket now, not for prayer but for the weight of them, the reminder of her patience. She taught me that persistence is not just about pushing forward, but about finding another way when the first door closes.

Mathematics had always made sense to me in the way it never seemed to for my friends at school. At King's College London, I studied it because I loved the clarity of it, the way problems had solutions if you knew where to look. During my placement year, I spent three months at a comprehensive in South London, working with Year 9 students who had been told they were 'not maths people.' I watched a girl named Sarah solve quadratic equations for the first time, her face lighting up when she realized she had been capable of it all along. That was when I knew. Teaching was not just what I wanted to do. It was what I needed to do.

In 2023, I applied for a PGCE in Mathematics at the Institute of Education, University College London. The admissions officer, Ms. Williams, called me personally to discuss my application. "Your academic record is excellent," she said, "and your placement feedback shows real promise. The course is available, but I need to let you know about the funding situation." She paused, and I could hear her flipping through papers. "The training bursary for mathematics teachers has been reduced from £28,000 to £15,000 due to Department for Education budget constraints. You would need to cover the shortfall yourself."

I took out additional student loans to bridge the gap. Everyone said it was an investment in my future. The training itself was everything I had hoped for. I learned how to break down complex concepts, how to spot the moment when understanding clicked, how to design lessons that would work for different kinds of minds. During the placement portion, I was assigned to Harris Academy Croydon East, where the head of mathematics, Mr. Chen, showed me around the department on my first morning.

"We desperately need qualified mathematics teachers," he told me, stopping outside three empty classrooms. "These rooms have been unused for two terms. But we cannot offer permanent contracts because our recruitment budget has been frozen by the Department for Education's teacher supply model." He showed me the timetable where mathematics classes had been cancelled or covered by teaching assistants because there were not enough qualified staff. "The students are here," he said. "The need is obvious. But we have been told there is no funding for new posts."

I completed my PGCE with distinction, but when I applied for positions across South London, I kept hitting the same wall. At John Ruskin College, the head teacher, Dr. Martinez, walked me through the mathematics department after my interview. "You would be perfect for what we need," she said, stopping outside three empty mathematics classrooms. "We have a growing waiting list of students who want to study A-level mathematics, and these rooms are fully equipped. But Treasury spending rules mean we cannot fund new teaching posts despite the obvious demand."

Walking past the college one evening in March, I saw something that stopped me cold. Through the ground-floor windows, I could see the computer lab Dr. Martinez had mentioned, completely empty. Twelve workstations, each with dual monitors, all switched off. Against the far wall, three interactive whiteboards were still in their original packaging, the plastic wrapping catching the light from the corridor. I stood there for ten minutes, watching the space that should have been full of students learning calculus or statistics, filled instead with expensive equipment gathering dust.

That was when I started to question what I had been told. If there was no money for teachers, why had there been money for the whiteboards? If the Treasury could not afford to hire me, how had it afforded to buy equipment that sat unused without me? The government that issues the pound had apparently chosen not to spend the pounds that would connect me to those empty classrooms full of students who needed to learn mathematics.

I used to accept the excuse that there was no funding. It sounded reasonable. The Department for Education had a limited budget, schools had to make difficult choices, everyone was tightening their belts. But the more I looked around, the less sense it made. The buildings existed. The students existed. The equipment existed. I existed, qualified and ready to teach. What exactly was it that there was no money for?

The government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to hire the mathematics teachers that schools were begging for. But money is not something you find under the sofa cushions. It is something you create when you spend. Every pound in those student loans I took out was created the moment the government decided to lend it. Every pound that bought those unopened whiteboards was created the moment someone decided to purchase them.

The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the classrooms were available, whether the students needed to learn. They were. All of them. The excuse was not a fact about the world. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility.

Now I work as a private tutor, helping students whose schools cannot provide enough mathematics teaching. I charge £40 an hour because that is what the market will bear, but I know most of the families in Croydon East cannot afford it. I am using the same skills, teaching the same subject, working with the same age groups I trained to teach. The only difference is that I am now paid by parents instead of by the state, which means I can only reach the students whose families have money.

I understand now that this is not just my story. It is the story of every constituency where trained teachers cannot find permanent positions while head teachers cancel lessons for lack of staff. It is the story of every place where the government that creates the currency claims it cannot find enough currency to connect the people to the work that needs doing.