Jasper

I grew up in Portsmouth watching my dad work on naval systems and my mum help kids who struggled with reading. Engineering fascinated me, but it was my younger sister who showed me where I really wanted to go. She was brilliant but maths terrified her until she got a teacher who could explain complex ideas in ways that clicked. Watching her confidence grow taught me something: the difference between a student giving up and breaking through often comes down to one person who knows how to bridge that gap.

I studied physics at Southampton, then spent two years as a lab technician at QinetiQ. Good work, interesting problems, but every time I helped a graduate student or explained something to a colleague, I felt that same spark I'd seen in my sister's teacher. I wanted to be in a classroom, making physics accessible to teenagers who thought it was impossible.

In early 2023, I applied for a PGCE in physics teaching at the University of Portsmouth. The timing felt perfect. There was a teacher training bursary of £27,000 specifically for physics graduates like me. Without it, I couldn't afford to stop working for a year to train, but with it, I could cover my rent and bills while learning how to teach. The course director was enthusiastic when I visited. They needed people with strong physics backgrounds, especially men who could show boys that science wasn't just for certain types of students.

In March, the letter arrived. The physics bursary for the South East region had been reduced from £27,000 to £15,000. The reason given was 'Treasury spending constraints and departmental budget allocations'. I stared at that phrase for a long time. It sounded official, inevitable. I couldn't make up the £12,000 shortfall on a lab technician's salary, so I deferred my place.

I tried Southampton University's PGCE programme, thinking maybe their allocation was different. The admissions officer was sympathetic but clear: "There is no funding. Bursaries are set nationally by the Department for Education, and the South East allocation has been cut despite teacher shortages." She showed me the government guidance. Same £15,000, same impossible gap between what they offered and what it cost to live while training.

I applied for a career change loan through the government's skills funding agency. Surely there was some other route. The response was a masterpiece of circular logic: physics teaching wasn't eligible for career change loans because it was supposed to be covered by bursaries. But the bursaries had been cut to a level that meant I couldn't take them up. I was trapped between two government departments that had each decided the other should fund my training.

By September 2023, I was still working at QinetiQ, still wanting to teach, still blocked. I went back to the University of Portsmouth to collect some transcripts for another job application. Walking past the education faculty, I noticed how quiet it was. I asked at reception what had happened to all the physics teacher trainees.

The course director looked tired when she explained. They'd had to turn away thirty qualified physics graduates because without adequate bursaries, people simply couldn't afford to train. The training rooms were sitting empty. The equipment was there, the lecturers were there, the placement schools were desperate for new teachers. But the connection couldn't be made.

"We have everything we need except the political will to fund it properly," she said. "The Treasury treats teacher training like a household trying to save money on groceries. But we're not a household. We're the government. We issue the currency."

That's when I started to see the contradiction clearly. I walked through those empty training rooms, designed for thirty students, equipped with everything needed to turn physics graduates into teachers. In Portsmouth alone, I knew at least five other people in my situation: qualified, motivated, blocked by the same funding gap. The schools were calling the university asking where their new trainees were. The students who needed good physics teachers were sitting in classes taught by non-specialists because there weren't enough properly trained teachers to go around.

If the people existed, and the building existed, and the need existed, what exactly was it that "there was no money" for? The government that prints every pound note had chosen not to spend the pounds that would connect willing graduates to desperate schools. That wasn't an accounting problem. It was a political decision dressed as a budget constraint.

I started to understand something I'd never questioned before. When the Department for Education said they couldn't afford to fund teacher training properly, they were applying household logic to a currency issuer. A household has to find money before it can spend it. The UK government creates money when it spends. The question was never whether the pounds existed. The question was whether the government chose to spend them into teacher training or somewhere else.

I'm still at QinetiQ, still watching this unfold. I see the same logic everywhere now: the government that issues the currency telling people it can't find enough of the currency to fund the things we obviously need. Every time someone says "there's no money" for teacher training or school repairs or education support, I think about those empty training rooms.

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 people existed, whether the skills could be taught, 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.

What happened to me is happening in every constituency where qualified people want to work in public service while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard isn't bare. It's locked, and someone chose not to open it.