Noor

I've always been the one explaining things. Growing up in Blackheath, family gatherings meant me surrounded by younger cousins, breaking down why the sky is blue or how microwaves work. It felt natural, seeing that moment when confusion turns to understanding. After my physics degree at King's, I went into pharmaceutical research in Canary Wharf, but two years of lab work left me restless. The data was fascinating, but I missed that spark of connection. I started volunteering at our local community centre, helping teenagers with GCSE science, and it confirmed what I'd suspected: I wanted to teach.

In September 2023, I called the Department for Education's Get Into Teaching helpline. The adviser was encouraging, telling me physics teachers were desperately needed and directing me toward School Centred Initial Teacher Training programmes. I felt optimistic. Finally, a way to use my expertise where it was actually wanted.

I applied to the South East London SCITT consortium first. The coordinator, Sarah, was enthusiastic about my application during our initial phone call. Then came the complication. Physics teacher training bursaries had been cut from £28,000 to £15,000 for London trainees. Without the full bursary, I couldn't afford to give up my lab salary. Sarah was apologetic but blunt: "We understand your position completely. We have twelve unfilled physics training places this year because potential trainees simply cannot manage financially."

Twelve places. Twelve future physics teachers that London schools desperately needed, sitting empty because the money wasn't there. It sounded reasonable, even inevitable. Everyone was feeling the squeeze.

In January 2024, I tried Teach First. Their fast-track programme had appealed to me, placing graduates directly into challenging schools. But when I called, I was told their physics cohort had been suspended. "Treasury spending constraints," the recruitment officer explained. "We hope to restart next year, but there are no guarantees." Another door, closing with the same explanation.

I contacted Greenwich Teaching School Alliance next. The programme manager, David, agreed to meet me at their training centre. Walking through that building changed everything. David showed me their brand-new science training lab, complete with interactive whiteboards, laboratory equipment, and teaching resources that would have made my university jealous. Everything gleamed under fluorescent lights, perfectly arranged and completely empty.

"We have everything ready except the funding to make it work for people like you," David said, gesturing around the unused space. "We built this facility two years ago, recruited excellent mentor teachers, developed our curriculum. But we can't run viable cohorts when the bursaries don't cover London living costs."

Standing in that empty lab, surrounded by equipment that should have been training the next generation of physics teachers, something shifted in my understanding. The people existed. I existed. My neighbour, James, a chemistry graduate who'd been unemployed for eight months, existed. He'd also given up on teacher training for the same financial reasons. The need existed, too. Every school I'd contacted was desperate for science teachers. The training programmes existed. The facilities existed.

So what exactly was it that there was "no money" for?

I started paying attention differently. The government that prints pound notes and mints coins was telling qualified graduates it couldn't find enough of those pounds to train us as teachers. But the constraint wasn't really about money, was it? It was about people, skills, materials, time. And all of those were sitting right there, unused.

I thought about my pharmaceutical company, how they'd invested millions in a new research wing last year. Nobody asked where that money "came from." The investors expected returns, so the money appeared. But when it came to training teachers that London's children desperately needed, suddenly the cupboard was bare.

The more I investigated, the more the excuses unraveled. The Department for Education had set recruitment targets that treated London the same as areas where £15,000 might actually be liveable. HM Treasury had imposed spending constraints as though the government operated like a household trying to balance its chequebook. But households don't issue their own currency. They can't create money by spending it into existence.

I kept volunteering at the community centre, watching bright teenagers struggle through physics concepts that could transform their futures, knowing that qualified graduates like me were being turned away from teacher training by accounting logic that made no sense. The real question was never about money. It was about whether the political system valued training teachers enough to spend pounds into existence to make it happen.

I now understand what I didn't understand when I made that first hopeful phone call. The phrase "there is no money" isn't a fact about the world. It's a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. Every time someone said it to me, they were making a political decision about priorities, then disguising it as an accounting problem.

The government that creates the currency chose not to spend the currency that would connect qualified graduates to teacher training. That choice left James unemployed, left me stuck in a job I'd outgrown, and left David's pristine training lab gathering dust while London's schools struggled with teacher shortages. The excuse wasn't inevitable. It was ideology masquerading as economic necessity.

I'm still here, still watching, still volunteering. But I hear things differently now. When someone says "we can't afford it," I ask: can't afford what, exactly? The people are here. The skills exist. The materials are available. What they really mean is that someone in Westminster decided not to authorize the spending that would connect these resources to the need.

That's not a shortage. It's a choice. And choices can be made differently.