Anya

I grew up in a council flat in Paddington watching my parents leave for their night shift cleaning offices across London. They'd come home exhausted at dawn, speaking Polish to each other and careful English to me and my brother. My mum always said education was the one thing they could give us that nobody could take away. When I got the chemistry degree from Imperial College on a bursary, I thought I'd proved her right. But I wanted to do more than just succeed for myself. I wanted to teach.

It was my brother who made me realise teaching could be my path. He'd been struggling with maths for years, growing more frustrated and falling further behind, until Year 9 when he got Mrs Chen. She stayed after school, broke down every problem into steps he could follow, never made him feel stupid for asking the same question twice. By the end of the year he was helping other students. I watched him discover he was good at something he'd thought he'd never understand. I wanted to be that teacher for someone else's younger brother.

In September 2023, I walked into the admissions office at the Institute of Education feeling confident. I'd scored highly on all the aptitude tests. The admissions officer, a tired-looking woman with grey streaks in her hair, looked at my results and nodded approvingly. "Chemistry teachers are desperately needed in London schools," she told me. "You'd be snapped up the moment you qualified." Then she paused. "The challenge is the bursary. It used to be £28,000 for chemistry trainees. This year it's £10,000."

I asked why. "Treasury constraints," she said, as though that explained everything. "The Department for Education has to work within their allocated budget. There's no funding for the full bursaries anymore."

£10,000 wouldn't cover rent in London, let alone food and transport. I took a job at a retail chain in Oxford Street, stacking shelves and serving customers, saving every pound I could. I lived on pasta and tinned tomatoes for months, walking to work to save on tube fares. I reapplied the following year.

King's College accepted me immediately for their PGCE programme. The course leader, Dr Williams, seemed genuinely excited about my application. "Your background is exactly what we need," he said. "Chemistry graduates with your academic record and your motivation." Then he explained the new system. "The bursary is means-tested now. Based on your retail earnings last year, you won't qualify for support."

I asked how other people were managing. "They're not," he said bluntly. "We have 15 empty places on the chemistry track. Graduates who want to teach but can't afford to train." He showed me the spreadsheet on his laptop. Fifteen blank rows where names should have been.

I walked home through Queen's Park, past three secondary schools I'd noticed before but never really seen. Each had signs outside: "Supply teachers needed - science subjects." At Paddington Academy, I stopped and asked the receptionist if I could speak to someone about teaching. The head teacher, Mrs Rodriguez, came down to meet me herself.

"Are you qualified?" she asked immediately when I mentioned chemistry. When I explained my situation, her face fell. "If only we could train people like you," she said. "We've been running Year 10 chemistry with a geography teacher for two years. She's trying her best, but the students know it's not the same. The Department for Education keeps telling us there's no money for proper teacher training."

That weekend, I walked down Harrow Road and stopped outside a building I'd passed hundreds of times without noticing. The sign was faded but readable: "London Teacher Training Centre - Science Faculty." The windows were dusty, but I could see inside. Laboratory benches in rows, exactly what you'd need to train chemistry teachers. Equipment covered in white sheets, microscopes and spectrometers that could have prepared a dozen teachers every year. The building stood empty.

I stood there for a long time, looking through those windows. The graduates existed - I'd met them in the King's College waiting room, all turned away for the same reason. The schools needed teachers - I'd seen their desperate adverts. The equipment existed, locked away under those sheets. The classrooms existed, gathering dust behind those windows.

What exactly was it that there was "no money" for?

I started to understand that I'd been asking the wrong question. I'd been asking where the money would come from, as though the UK government had to check its bank account before spending. But the government issues the currency. When the Treasury says there's no funding, it means they've chosen not to create the pounds that would pay for teacher training. They could create them tomorrow, just as they created billions for bank bailouts and billions more for COVID support.

The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed - they did. Whether the skills could be taught - they could. Whether the materials and buildings were available - they were, sitting empty on Harrow Road. Whether London schools needed chemistry teachers - desperately.

Everything required for teacher training was there except the political decision to make it happen. Someone in Westminster had decided that connecting graduates to classrooms wasn't worth creating the currency to pay for it. That's not an economic law. It's a choice.

I work in retail now, but I haven't stopped watching. I see the same pattern everywhere: people who want to work, jobs that need doing, resources sitting unused, and officials explaining that the government that prints the money somehow cannot find enough of it. I used to accept that explanation. It sounded reasonable, even responsible.

I hear it differently now. When someone says "there's no money," I hear: "We choose not to spend money." When they say "Treasury constraints," I hear: "Treasury choices." The constraint was never the currency. It was the political will to use it.

That's what I understand now that I didn't understand when I first walked into that admissions office. This isn't just happening to me in Queen's Park and Maida Vale. It's 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.