Saskia

Saskia did not exist before this episode. What they are about to describe is happening across London as you listen. This is their story. In one of the most deprived constituencies in the country, mathematics graduates stand ready to teach in schools that desperately need them, but teacher training programmes sit half-empty because bursaries have been slashed. The classrooms exist, the equipment waits unused, and the need grows daily while Treasury spending rules treat education like a luxury the government cannot afford. Here is what Saskia discovered when she tried to become a teacher. I always knew I wanted to come back to Peckham. Growing up here with my Dutch father and Jamaican mother, I watched my younger cousins struggle with maths homework every evening around our kitchen table. I loved the moment when their faces changed from confusion to understanding, when I could show them that algebra wasn't some mysterious code but just another way of thinking through problems. After three years doing data analysis in the City, I decided that was where I belonged: in a classroom, making mathematics make sense for kids who looked like me and came from streets like mine. In September 2023, I applied to the School-Centred Initial Teacher Training programme at Harris Academy Peckham. I was excited about the chance to train while working directly in my community, learning from teachers who understood the challenges our students faced. When I called to check on my application, the coordinator told me something that stopped me cold: "The mathematics teacher training bursary has been reduced from £27,000 to £15,000. The Department for Education cut funding for shortage subjects in London." I asked how that made sense if mathematics teachers were in short supply. She said, "I know. It doesn't make sense to me either." £15,000 wouldn't cover my rent, let alone living costs. I applied directly to the Institute of Education for a PGCE instead. Two weeks later, I received an email explaining that their mathematics places were 70% unfilled because the reduced bursaries made the course unaffordable for London living costs. The course leader was apologetic: "We have the capacity to train twice as many mathematics teachers, but we cannot make the numbers work for our students." I contacted Teach First next. They had always recruited heavily in London, particularly for mathematics. The recruitment officer explained that they had halved their London mathematics recruitment this year. "Treasury spending rules mean we can only fund a fixed number of trainees nationally, regardless of where teachers are most needed," she said. "There is no funding to expand in the areas where the shortages are most acute." At first, I accepted this. It sounded reasonable. Everyone was saying the same thing: there was no money. Budgets were tight. Difficult decisions had to be made. It was disappointing, but I understood that resources were limited. Then my friend Emma, who worked as a careers adviser in Lewisham, mentioned something strange. "You know the old Goldsmiths teacher training centre in New Cross? It's been closed since last year, but apparently all the equipment is still there." She gave me the address. I decided to walk over and see for myself. The building was a short bus ride from my flat. Modern, well-maintained, with a sign outside that still read "Department of Educational Studies." I knocked on the front door, and a caretaker answered. When I explained I was trying to find teacher training in mathematics, his face fell. "Such a waste," he said. "Come in, I'll show you." He led me through corridors lined with empty classrooms. Then he opened a door marked "Mathematics Teaching Lab 1." The room was perfect: thirty desks arranged in small groups, three interactive whiteboards, and cupboards full of unopened packages of graphing calculators, geometric sets, and algebra tiles. Everything a mathematics teacher trainer could want. He opened another door: "Mathematics Teaching Lab 2." The same setup, equally untouched. A third room contained demonstration equipment for teaching statistics and probability. "The programme was suspended temporarily due to funding cuts," the caretaker explained. "That was eighteen months ago. Nothing's been moved. The university is still paying me to keep it clean, but no one comes anymore." He picked up a packet of unopened whiteboard markers. "Funny thing is, I get calls every week from people like you, asking about teacher training. I have to tell them to try somewhere else." Standing in those rooms, I finally understood something I had not understood before. 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. But the people existed. I existed. Emma's neighbour down the street, who had a physics degree and wanted to teach, existed. The classrooms existed. The equipment existed. The schools that needed mathematics teachers existed. The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. I used to accept the logic that "there was no money," as though the Treasury was a household checking its bank balance before the weekly shop. But 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 I see now is not a shortage of resources but a shortage of political will. Every week, I pass that empty building in New Cross. Every week, I think about those unopened graphing calculators. Every week, I remember what the Teach First recruiter said about Treasury spending rules that treat teacher training like a luxury rather than an investment in the people who will shape our children's futures. This is not just my story. It is the story of 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 by people who had the key and chose not to use it. What Saskia experienced has a name: Cherry Picking. This technique works like a tobacco company in the 1960s highlighting the one study that failed to link smoking to cancer while ignoring hundreds that proved the connection. They select the rare examples where government spending produced disappointing results to justify never spending at all, while ignoring the overwhelming evidence of what happens when public investment works. In Saskia's case, every institution cited the same false constraint: "there is no funding." But when pressed, each revealed the same pattern. The Department for Education pointed to one failed teacher training pilot from 2019 to justify cutting bursaries nationwide. The Treasury used Greece's debt crisis to argue against domestic education spending, despite Greece using the euro rather than issuing its own currency. Teach First mentioned "efficiency savings" while half their training capacity sat unused. They cherry-picked failures to justify inaction while ignoring the Nordic countries where large public sectors correlate with economic success, not decline. The UK government issues its own currency. It does not need to find pounds before it spends them. The real constraint is resources: people, skills, materials, time. And in Saskia's constituency, those resources were sitting idle. The graduates existed, the empty classrooms existed, the schools needing teachers existed. The resources existed. The people existed. The decision not to connect them was political, not financial. Peckham ranks 105 out of 543 English constituencies on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025. The constituency has 881 registered charities. Total grants received through 360Giving GrantNav amount to £48 million. All sources are published at Blocked Britain dot co dot UK. Blocked Britain tells the stories of people whose lives are shaped by the gap between what Britain needs and what its institutions choose to provide. Every character is fictional. Every situation is drawn from official statistics. Produced by Blocked Britain.