Kiran

I am Kiran, and I have always believed that physics can change lives. Growing up in Woolwich, watching my mum work two jobs to keep us going, I learned that numbers are not abstract things. They are power bills and bus fares and the difference between staying warm and staying cold. When my little brother started failing maths at secondary school, I spent hours showing him that equations were just stories waiting to be told. The moment he finally understood how velocity worked, his face lit up like he had discovered fire. That is when I knew I wanted to teach.

I graduated from King's College London in June 2023 with a first in Physics and a clear plan. I would train to teach in schools like the one I attended in Woolwich, where half the science teachers were not specialists and kids like my brother were being failed by a system that treated physics like it was optional. The government was offering bursaries to attract physics graduates into teaching. It seemed straightforward: they needed teachers, I wanted to teach, money was available to make it happen.

In September 2023, I applied for the School-Centred Initial Teacher Training programme at Greenwich Community College. The admissions tutor, Dr Sarah Mitchell, was enthusiastic about my application until she reached the funding page. "The physics bursary has been cut from £28,000 to £15,000," she told me. "And there are only twelve funded places for the whole of southeast London." She paused, looking uncomfortable. "The Department for Education says there is no funding for more places." I was waitlisted, watching as those twelve places were filled by October.

By February 2024, I was becoming desperate. I applied to the University of Greenwich for their PGCE programme. Professor James Hartwell, the programme director, was frank with me. "The Department for Education has reduced our physics allocation by 40% this year," he said. "There is simply no funding to train more physics teachers, even though every school in the borough is crying out for them." He showed me the official letter from the Department. The word "constraints" appeared six times. "Budget" appeared eleven times. Not once did anyone mention that classrooms were sitting empty while qualified graduates were being turned away.

In May 2024, I tried Teach First, the programme that was supposed to put top graduates into the schools that needed them most. The recruitment coordinator, Emma Price, was apologetic but clear. "We have stopped recruiting physics teachers for London schools entirely," she said. "Treasury spending constraints mean we cannot afford to run that programme in the capital." I asked her if she meant there were no schools that needed physics teachers. She laughed, but it was not a happy sound. "Are you kidding? Every school I work with is desperate for physics teachers. But the Treasury has capped our funding. Our hands are tied."

That was when I started to notice things that did not fit. Walking past my old secondary school in Woolwich in July, I saw a large sign by the main gate: "Supply Physics Teacher Required - Excellent Daily Rate." Through the windows, I could see three science laboratories standing completely empty. I knocked on the reception door and asked to speak to the head teacher, Mrs Linda Foster. She recognised me from my school days and was delighted to hear I was a physics graduate. "We have been looking for a qualified physics teacher for eighteen months," she said. "The supply agencies send us biology teachers who try their best, but it is not the same. The kids know when someone is out of their depth."

I told her I wanted to teach but could not get onto a training programme. Her face fell. "That is exactly the problem," she said. "The system produces the need and the people to meet it, then puts barriers between them." She walked me through the empty labs. "This equipment cost thousands. These benches could seat twenty-four students each. But without qualified teachers, we run combined science instead of proper physics. The kids get half the education they deserve."

Standing in those empty laboratories, I started to see the contradiction clearly. The people existed - I was one of them, and I knew others. The buildings existed - I was standing in them. The students existed - they were being taught by non-specialists because no one else was available. The materials existed - the equipment was sitting unused in front of me. So what exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

The more I thought about it, the more the excuses fell apart. The UK government issues pounds. It does not find them under the sofa or borrow them from China. When the Treasury says it "cannot afford" to train physics teachers, it means it chooses not to create and spend the pounds that would connect qualified graduates to empty classrooms. That is not an accounting problem. It is a political decision dressed up as arithmetic.

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.

I am still here, still watching, still ready to teach when the politics finally catch up with the possibility. And I know I am not alone. In every constituency across Britain, there are people like me and schools like the one in Woolwich, kept apart by a Treasury that treats investment in education like a luxury the country cannot afford rather than the foundation everything else is built on.