Sasha

I became a teacher because my parents were teachers. My mother came from Poland, my father from Nigeria, and they met in the staff room of a comprehensive in Wimbledon. They showed me that education was not just about passing on facts but about opening doors, about taking something complex and making it clear enough that a fifteen-year-old could suddenly see the pattern and light up with understanding. When I graduated from Imperial with my chemistry degree in 2021, there was never any question what I would do next.

The Department for Education had always offered substantial bursaries for chemistry teachers. The shortage was well-documented, the need obvious. I applied in September, already planning how I would set up experiments that would make molecular structure as vivid for my students as it had become for me. Then the letter arrived. The bursary for chemistry teachers in London had been cut from £28,000 to £10,000. "Due to budget constraints across all teacher training programmes," they explained. It sounded reasonable. Everyone was tightening belts.

I took out additional student loans and enrolled anyway at St Mary's University in Twickenham. The PGCE course was everything I had hoped – until March, when my placement school in Mitcham called me in. The head of science, Ms Chen, looked genuinely upset as she explained that the school could no longer take trainee teachers. "The DfE has reduced our training grant," she said. "We cannot afford to provide the mentoring support." She recommended I transfer to a school in Surrey. Two hours each way on the train, but what choice did I have?

After qualifying in July 2022, I applied to fifteen secondary schools across South London. Every response was the same: "We would love to have you, but there is no budget for new teachers this year." At Harris Academy Merton, the deputy head was particularly apologetic. "We have three unfilled chemistry teacher positions," he admitted. "A waiting list of students wanting to take A-level chemistry. But Treasury has capped our staffing budget." He walked me past the science block – modern laboratories, well-equipped, several standing completely empty.

I started doing supply work, moving from school to school, covering for teachers who were off sick or had simply left the profession. The irony was not lost on me: schools were paying premium rates for temporary cover while telling permanent applicants they had no money. At one school in Merton, I covered the same chemistry classes for three months straight because they could not recruit anyone to the permanent post.

Walking through Mitcham town centre after another unsuccessful interview, I passed the old adult education centre on London Road. The building was locked, windows dusty, a "For Sale" sign weathered by months of rain. My neighbour, Mrs Patterson, was walking her dog and stopped to chat. "Shame about that place," she said. "Used to run teacher training courses there, back in the day. Helped loads of people get qualified. But they redirected the funding to other priorities."

I stood there looking at that empty building and something shifted in my thinking. The people existed – I was one of them, and I had met dozens of others in the same position. The students existed – I had seen the waiting lists. The buildings existed – I had walked past empty classrooms every day. What exactly was it that "there was no money" for? The government that prints the notes and mints the coins was telling me it could not find enough of them to connect ready teachers to desperate schools.

The excuse had always sounded so reasonable when delivered by well-meaning heads and training coordinators. "Budget constraints." "Funding shortfalls." "Tough economic climate." But the climate had not made the classrooms disappear. It had not erased the knowledge from my degree or the passion from my application. It had not removed the students from the waiting lists or the science from the curriculum.

I started to understand that "there is no money" was not a fact about the world. It was a choice about priorities, dressed in the language of impossibility. The same government that could find billions for bank bailouts and tax cuts was claiming poverty when asked to connect qualified teachers to schools that desperately needed them. Not because the teachers did not exist, or the schools did not exist, or the students did not exist, but because someone in Whitehall had decided not to spend the money that would make those connections.

I am still here, still teaching when I can get the work, still watching this absurd dance where supply agencies charge schools double what a permanent teacher would cost while permanent positions remain "unaffordable." I understand now what I did not understand when I first received that letter about reduced bursaries.

The government that issues the pound chose not to spend the pounds that would have trained more teachers, equipped more schools, opened more classrooms. That was not an accounting problem. That was a political decision. 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.

What I experienced was not bad luck or inevitable hardship. It was the result of a series of political choices made by people who had alternatives. They could have maintained the bursaries. They could have funded the placement schools. They could have lifted the staffing caps. They chose not to, and then presented that choice as though it had been imposed on them by the laws of mathematics.

It is the same story in every constituency where young people want to learn and graduates want to teach, but someone in Westminster insists the cupboard is bare. The cupboard is only bare because someone decided not to fill it. That decision has a name, and it is not economics. It is politics.