Ash

I knew I wanted to teach the moment I watched my younger cousin Tom struggle through his GCSE physics revision. He'd sit at our kitchen table, staring at equations about momentum and energy, and I could see the exact moment when his brain would switch off. Not because he wasn't clever, but because nobody had ever shown him that physics was just the language for describing things he already understood. When I explained how a bicycle works using the same principles in his textbook, something clicked. That's when I realised I wanted to come home to Bolton and do this properly.

I'd spent three years working for a renewable energy company in Manchester after finishing my physics degree at Manchester Met. The work was fine, the money was decent, but I felt like I was missing something. Watching Tom made me realise what it was. My mum had been a teaching assistant at Little Lever Primary for fifteen years, and she'd always said the best part of her job was seeing children understand something for the first time. I wanted that feeling, and I wanted to bring it to physics in the schools around here, where too many kids like Tom were being written off as 'not academic enough' for science.

In September 2023, I applied to the School-Centred Initial Teacher Training programme at Bolton School Alliance. I'd done my research, knew there was a teacher shortage in physics, and felt confident I'd get a place. The coordinator, Mrs Rahman, was encouraging when I called to ask about the application process. Then she rang me back two weeks later with news that changed everything.

"I'm sorry, Ash, but the physics teacher training bursary has been cut from £28,000 to £15,000 for the North West region this year," she told me. "We can only offer three physics training places instead of our usual eight. The Department for Education says there's no budget for more."

I applied anyway, thinking I'd still have a decent chance with my degree and my enthusiasm. But they waitlisted me. Number seven on a list for three places. Mrs Rahman sounded genuinely apologetic when she called. "You're exactly the kind of candidate we want," she said, "but our hands are tied by the allocation."

So I tried the University of Bolton's PGCE programme. Same story. The admissions tutor, Dr Martinez, explained that they'd had to reduce their physics intake by half due to reduced government funding. "It's devastating," she said. "We know how desperately schools need physics teachers, but we simply cannot run courses without the training grants."

By January 2024, I was getting desperate. I contacted Teach First, thinking their graduate programme might have more flexibility. The recruiter was friendly but blunt: their North West physics allocation had been slashed, and they had a two-year waiting list. "The demand from graduates like you is huge," she explained, "but we're constrained by what the government will fund."

I kept hearing the same phrase everywhere: there's no money. It sounded reasonable at first. Everyone was saying it, and they all seemed genuinely sorry about the situation. I started to accept it as just how things were.

Then I went to visit my old secondary school, Canon Slade, to talk to Mrs Thompson, the head of science. I thought maybe she could give me some advice about alternative routes into teaching, or perhaps offer some supply work while I waited for a training place.

She walked me through the science department, and that's when I saw something that didn't make sense. Two entire physics labs, fully equipped with whiteboards, benches, gas taps, everything you'd need, sitting completely empty during what should have been lesson time.

"We're desperate for physics teachers," Mrs Thompson told me as we stood in one of the unused labs. "These rooms haven't been used for proper lessons in months because we're down to one physics teacher for the whole school. When I call the training providers to ask about new recruits, they say their hands are tied by Treasury allocations."

I stared at those empty benches and started to feel angry. Here were two perfectly good classrooms, sitting idle. Mrs Thompson was telling me they desperately needed teachers. I was standing right there, qualified and eager to train. Students like my cousin Tom were struggling with physics because their classes were overcrowded or cancelled. But somewhere in Whitehall, someone had decided there wasn't enough money to connect these things together.

The contradiction became even clearer that weekend. I was in my local pub, the White Horse in Little Lever, when I got talking to three lads I vaguely knew from school. All physics graduates from different universities, all unemployed, all wanting to teach but unable to access training places. One of them, Jamie, had been trying for two years. "They keep telling us to wait," he said. "Meanwhile, I'm stacking shelves at Asda."

That's when it hit me. The people existed. The classrooms existed. The desperate need existed. Students like Tom were suffering because of teacher shortages, schools were operating with empty labs, and qualified graduates were stacking shelves instead of teaching physics. What exactly was it that "there was no money" for?

The government that issues the pound had chosen not to spend the pounds that would connect these people to this work. That wasn't an accounting problem. That was a political decision dressed up as a budget constraint.

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 applying for training places when they occasionally open up. But I understand now that what happened to me wasn't bad luck or natural scarcity. It was a series of political choices made by people who had alternatives. And I know this isn't just my story. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare.