Anisha

My dad worked as a naval engineer at Devonport, my mum as a librarian at Plymouth Central Library. They met at a community physics evening she'd organised for local schools. I suppose that's where I got my love of both physics and teaching. When I was doing my degree at Bath, I spent every Tuesday evening tutoring first-year students who were struggling with mechanics and thermodynamics. There's something magical about watching someone's face change when a concept finally clicks. I knew I'd found what I wanted to do with my life.

I came back to Plymouth after graduating, determined to teach at one of the local secondary schools. During my own time at Devonport High School for Girls, we'd had the same physics teacher for six years running because they couldn't find anyone to replace him when he wanted to move on. The situation hadn't improved. If anything, it was worse.

I applied to the School Centred Initial Teacher Training programme at Plymouth Teaching School Alliance in February 2023. The website was clear: physics graduates could receive a £27,000 bursary to train. That would cover my rent and help with my student loan payments while I learned to teach. I was excited. This was exactly what I'd planned since my second year at university.

In July, I received a phone call from the Alliance coordinator. "I'm afraid there's been a change to the bursary allocation," she said. "The Department for Education has reduced the physics bursary from £27,000 to £15,000. There is no funding for the higher amount anymore due to Treasury spending constraints."

Fifteen thousand wouldn't cover my costs. My student loan payments alone were £280 a month. Rent for a one-bedroom flat in Plymouth was £750. I asked if there were any other funding sources, any scholarships, any way to make up the difference.

"I'm sorry," she said. "The DfE sets the allocations and we have to work within them."

I tried the University of Plymouth's PGCE programme next. Surely they would have more flexibility, more options. I met with Dr Sarah Henderson from the Faculty of Science and Engineering in August.

"We'd love to have you on the programme," she told me. "But we've had to reduce our physics places from 25 to 12 this year. The budget has been cut and we cannot afford to run that programme at the previous scale."

I asked about the 13 missing places. Where had those students gone? What had happened to the demand?

"Oh, the demand is still there," Dr Henderson said. "We turned away qualified applicants. But the Department for Education funding formula has changed and we can't run more places than we can fund."

I started approaching schools directly. Maybe there was an employment-based route, a way to train while working. I contacted Plymouth College first, then Devonport High School for Boys.

The response was nearly identical from both. The head of science at Plymouth College explained it to me in September: "We'd be delighted to take you on as a trainee. We desperately need physics teachers. But we cannot afford to run that programme without the government funding support for employment-based training. The school budget simply doesn't stretch to covering a trainee's salary and the mentoring costs."

I was starting to see a pattern. Every door that closed came with the same explanation: no funding, budget cuts, Treasury constraints. It all sounded very reasonable. Very responsible. Everyone was living within their means.

But then I went to see those missing training places for myself. In September, I walked through the University of Plymouth's Faculty of Science and Engineering. Dr Henderson showed me the teacher training rooms on the third floor. Twenty desks arranged in a semicircle, each with its own whiteboard. Interactive smartboards mounted on every wall. A fully equipped physics laboratory designed specifically for trainee teachers to practice demonstrations.

All of it empty. All of it gathering dust.

"These rooms used to be full?" I asked.

"Until last year, yes. We had 25 trainees in here every Tuesday and Thursday. Now we use it for storage."

I stood there looking at those empty desks and something shifted in my understanding. The people existed - I was one of them. The facilities existed - they were right in front of me. The schools needed teachers - every head of science had told me so. So what exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

That afternoon, I went to the job centre in Plymouth city centre. I wasn't looking for work; I was looking for answers. I spoke to three physics graduates who were signing on. Theo, who'd graduated from Exeter with a first-class degree and wanted to teach. Sarah, who had a master's in astrophysics and had always dreamed of inspiring the next generation. Marcus, who'd worked in engineering for five years and wanted to move into education.

All of them had tried the same routes I'd tried. All of them had heard the same explanations. All of them wanted to do exactly the work that Plymouth's schools needed doing.

I started to understand something I hadn't before. The government that issues the pound had chosen not to spend the pounds that would connect these people to this work. That wasn't an accounting problem. It was a political decision dressed as an accounting problem.

The DfE had set a recruitment target that treated Cornwall and Plymouth the same as Surrey and Hampshire, as though teacher shortages were distributed evenly across the country. The Treasury had allocated funding as though the government needed to find pounds before it could spend them, rather than spending pounds to deploy resources where they were needed.

I'm still here in Plymouth, still watching. Still seeing graduates who want to teach and schools that need teachers and training facilities sitting empty. I understand now what I didn't understand at the start.

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 people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard was never bare. It was locked.