Kofi

I grew up watching my parents leave for night shifts at the Ford plant, coming home with grease under their fingernails and stories about the engines they'd helped build. When the plant closed, they didn't talk about it much, but I saw how they looked at the empty car park when we drove past. That's when I decided I wanted to do work that couldn't be shipped overseas or shut down by accountants who'd never set foot in Barking. I wanted to teach physics.

The moment I knew for certain was watching my younger sister Akosua struggle with quadratic equations at the kitchen table. She'd stare at the page like the numbers were written in a foreign language, getting more frustrated each time I tried to explain. Then one evening, I drew the parabola on the back of an envelope and showed her how the equation was just describing that curve. Something clicked. Her whole face changed. She grabbed the pen and started working through problems I thought would take her weeks to understand. That's what I wanted to give other students: that moment when the abstract becomes clear, when you stop being afraid of physics and start seeing the patterns everywhere.

I applied for teacher training at the Institute of Education in September 2023. The government was saying it needed more science teachers, especially in physics, and I felt like I was exactly what they were looking for. I had my physics degree from Queen Mary, I'd done volunteer work at the youth centre, I knew the community where I'd be teaching. The application went well. They liked my background, my academic record, my motivation. Then came the phone call.

"Your application is very strong," the admissions tutor said, "but I need to tell you about the bursary situation. The training bursary for physics in London has been cut from £28,000 to £15,000 for this cohort." She paused. "I know that's a significant reduction. You'll need to think about whether the course is still viable for you financially."

£15,000 was barely enough to cover rent in London, let alone support my family while I trained full-time. I thanked her and said I'd call back, but we both knew I wouldn't be taking the place.

I tried applying directly to schools for School Centred Initial Teacher Training. Barking Abbey School had always taken trainee teachers – I remembered seeing them when I was a student there. But when I spoke to their head of science, she sounded tired before I'd even finished explaining why I was calling.

"We've had our funding allocation reduced," she said. "We can only take two trainees this year instead of our usual six. We've already filled both places." When I asked if there might be something for next year, she was quiet for a moment. "Honestly, I don't know if there'll be funding for any places next year. The Department for Education keeps saying they need more science teachers, but they keep cutting the money to train them."

Teach First was my next try. Their programme was supposed to fast-track graduates into teaching in challenging schools – exactly where I wanted to work. But their London coordinator was apologetic when she returned my call.

"Our London cohort is 40% smaller than last year," she said. "Budgetary constraints from the Department for Education. We're not taking any more applications for physics this cycle." She suggested I try again next year, but couldn't promise the situation would be different.

By January 2024, I was getting desperate. I applied to the University of East London's education faculty, thinking maybe their bursaries worked differently. When I went in for the interview, the admissions officer was honest with me in a way that surprised me.

"Come with me," she said after we'd talked. She led me down a corridor lined with seminar rooms. Most were empty. "We've got space for 200 more trainee teachers," she said, pushing open a door to show me rows of empty desks. "The lecturers are here, the resources are here, the partner schools are desperate for more trainees. But Treasury won't fund the bursaries. The training places are here, but the money just isn't."

Walking past the university's sports centre afterwards, I noticed the jobs board by the entrance. It was covered with advertisements for part-time physics tutors. Underneath, dozens of CVs were pinned up – all recent graduates, many with physics degrees better than mine, looking for any way to get classroom experience. Here were all these people who wanted to teach, and schools that needed teachers, and training places sitting empty because someone in Westminster said there wasn't enough money.

That's when I started asking different questions. If the training places existed, and the lecturers existed, and the graduates existed, and the schools needed teachers – what exactly was it that there wasn't enough money for? The government that prints the pounds on my bank notes was telling me it couldn't find enough of them to connect the people who were standing right there with the work that needed doing.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that issues the currency told me it could not find enough of it to train the people who were ready to work in the schools that needed them. But 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's the same logic as a household that says "we cannot afford it," except a household does not create its own money. The government does. The limit was never the pounds. The limit was the willingness to spend them into the places and the people who needed them.

I'm still here, still watching, still seeing the same pattern repeat. Every time I pass a school with a "vacancy" sign for science teachers, every time I hear about kids struggling with physics because there aren't enough qualified teachers, I think about those empty seminar rooms at UEL. This isn't just my story. It's the story of every constituency where the people and the need exist side by side while someone in Westminster looks at the printing press they control and says the cupboard is bare.