Amara

I grew up in Small Heath, and numbers always made sense to me. While my friends struggled with algebra, I could see the patterns underneath. I studied mathematics at Birmingham City University and spent three years as a data analyst, but I kept thinking about my younger brother Jamal. He'd come home frustrated from Year 9 maths, saying the teacher made everything sound impossible. When Mrs. Chen took over his class, everything changed. She showed him that the same equations could unlock different problems, and suddenly he was asking for extra homework. I watched that transformation and knew I wanted to be that teacher for someone else.

In January 2023, I applied for the PGCE secondary mathematics programme at Birmingham City University. The admissions tutor, Dr. Sarah Williams, called me within a week. "We'd love to have you," she said. "Your application is exactly what we're looking for. But I have to be honest with you – the Department for Education has cut the mathematics training bursary for the West Midlands from £24,000 to £10,000. Most of our candidates can't afford to live on that while studying full-time."

I calculated the numbers. Rent, food, transport, course materials. Even with part-time work, I'd need to borrow more than I could reasonably pay back on a starting teacher's salary. But I wasn't ready to give up.

I contacted the University of Birmingham's School Direct programme. Their coordinator, James Miller, was enthusiastic until I mentioned funding. "The partner schools would need to contribute to your training placement costs," he explained. "But they've all said the same thing: without government support for additional trainee places, they can't stretch their budgets any further. There is no funding for new partnerships this year."

At first, that sounded reasonable. Schools have tight budgets. Everyone knows that. But then I tried Teach First. I'd heard they placed graduates in challenging schools across Birmingham. Surely they'd have something.

The programme coordinator, Lisa Ahmed, was apologetic but clear. "Our West Midlands mathematics places have been cut by sixty percent due to Treasury spending limits," she said. "We're only taking twelve trainees this year instead of thirty. The applications closed in November because we knew we'd be oversubscribed." She mentioned that someone called Demi from Erdington had faced the same situation the previous year. "Bright mathematics graduate, excellent references, but the numbers just don't add up anymore. The budget has been cut."

Again, it sounded like a reasonable explanation. The government has limited resources. Tough choices have to be made. I was disappointed, but I understood.

Except something kept bothering me. I was walking through Handsworth in September when I passed the old Birmingham Metropolitan College teacher training centre. The building was locked, but I could see through the windows. Fully equipped classrooms with interactive whiteboards still mounted on the walls. Mathematics textbooks stacked on shelves. Computer labs with the chairs pushed neatly under the desks, as if someone had just stepped out for lunch.

I found the caretaker, Tom, having a cigarette by the back entrance. He'd worked there for fifteen years. "Twenty lecturers made redundant last summer," he told me. "Most of them are still claiming Universal Credit. The Department for Education said they couldn't afford to keep the centre open, but look at this place. Nothing's wrong with it. The equipment works fine. I check it every week."

That's when something clicked. If Demi wanted to train, and I wanted to train, and schools across Birmingham needed mathematics teachers, and the classrooms were sitting there empty with equipment that worked perfectly, what exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

I started asking different questions. The UK government issues its own currency. It doesn't need to find pounds before it spends them – it creates them when it spends. The Treasury that told the Department for Education to cut training bursaries is the same Treasury that helps the Bank of England create billions when banks need support. They didn't say there was no money when they needed to bail out financial institutions. They found the money. They created it.

The real question was never whether the money existed. The question was whether the people existed – they did. Whether the training facilities existed – they did. Whether schools needed mathematics teachers – they desperately did. Whether graduates with mathematics degrees wanted to teach – we were queuing up.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. Like 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 work as a data analyst now for a Birmingham logistics company. Good job, decent pay. But I still drive past that locked training centre sometimes. I still see the job adverts for mathematics teachers across the West Midlands. I still know there are young people like my brother who need someone to show them that numbers can unlock possibilities instead of creating barriers.

The resources existed. The people existed. The decision not to connect them was political, not financial. And once you see that pattern, you cannot unsee it. It is not just teacher training. It is housing, healthcare, transport – anywhere you find empty buildings next to unmet needs, idle people next to urgent work. The story is always the same: someone in Westminster decided the cupboard was bare, in a country that issues its own currency and whose only real limits are the people, skills, and materials that sit right in front of us, waiting to be connected.