Nira

I grew up above my parents' corner shop in Eccles, watching my mum calculate change in her head faster than the till could process it. She'd emigrated from Gujarat with a head for numbers and a belief that education was the one investment that always paid off. During family gatherings, I'd end up explaining algebra to my younger cousins around the kitchen table, using samosas to demonstrate geometric shapes. My dad would joke that I was born to be a teacher, but I thought I wanted to be a physicist.

I got my physics degree from Manchester Met in 2021 and spent two years as a lab technician, calibrating equipment and running experiments. The work was precise, satisfying, but something was missing. I kept thinking about those kitchen table moments, the click of understanding in my cousins' eyes when a concept finally made sense. I wanted to be back in a room full of teenagers, showing them that the universe follows rules they could learn and use.

In early 2023, I applied for the physics teacher training programme at Manchester Metropolitan University. The admissions tutor called me back within a week – they were keen, she said, because physics teachers were desperately needed. Then came the but. The government had cut the training bursary from £28,000 to £15,000, and places were limited due to funding constraints. There were forty applicants for fifteen spots. I'd have to wait until the next academic year, and even then, there were no guarantees.

I tried the University of Salford instead. Same story, different numbers. The woman in admissions explained that their science teacher training intake had been reduced by forty percent because the Department for Education's recruitment targets didn't account for the North West's teacher shortage. "We know the schools need teachers," she said, her voice tired like she'd had this conversation many times before. "But there is no funding to train more than our allocated quota."

That phrase – "there is no funding" – I heard it everywhere I went. It sounded reasonable at first. Money was tight, everyone knew that. Priorities had to be set. I accepted it the way you accept rain.

I contacted Teach First, thinking an alternative route might work. Their representative was sympathetic but clear: their physics placements in Greater Manchester were oversubscribed with a waiting list stretching into the following year. This despite the fact that I personally knew three local secondary schools desperately needed science teachers. My old physics teacher at Walkden High had messaged me on Facebook, half-joking about whether I'd consider coming back to teach. When I mentioned Teach First's waiting list, she laughed bitterly. "We've got two physics teachers for four hundred kids," she said. "But apparently there's no room on their programme."

I arranged to meet with the headteacher at Walkden High School properly. She sat me down in her office with a cup of tea and spoke frankly. They'd love to have me, she said, but they couldn't afford to run their own training programme anymore. The school-centered initial teacher training routes required funding they no longer had access to. "The budget has been cut," she explained, spreading her hands. "We're down to essentials only."

I walked away from that meeting feeling like I was moving through a maze where every path led to the same dead end. But then something started to bother me. I was walking past the University of Salford's education building the following week when I noticed something odd. Through the windows, I could see an entire floor of empty seminar rooms. I asked a student smoking outside what they used to be. "Teacher training," she said. "Used to be packed. Now they're just storage."

That evening, I was in The Grapes with friends when I overheard a conversation at the next table. Two women were complaining about supply teaching – the uncertainty, the daily scramble for work, the way schools treated them like disposable labour. I leaned over and introduced myself. Both had physics degrees. Both wanted to teach full-time. Both had been told there were no training places available.

I stared at them, then at my pint, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Here were three physics graduates sitting in a pub in Salford, all wanting to teach. Down the road were empty seminar rooms that used to train teachers. Across the borough were schools crying out for science teachers. And somewhere in Westminster, officials were saying "there is no money" to connect these things.

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'm still here, still watching, still ready to teach. But I understand now that what happened to me wasn't an unfortunate shortage of resources. It was a deliberate decision to leave those resources disconnected. Every empty seminar room, every graduate doing supply work, every classroom without a proper physics teacher – these are not accidents of economics. They are the visible proof of a political choice dressed up as financial necessity. And I know I'm not the only one who can see it.