Kai's Story

Meet Kai, 26, from Leeds South in Yorkshire and The Humber. With a degree and passion for teaching, Kai was ready to train as a secondary school teacher in a subject with critical shortages. But when application time came, the training bursaries had been slashed by the Department for Education. The classrooms were there, the graduates wanting to teach were there, but Treasury spending rules forced education departments to compete for artificially limited pots of funding. Now Kai works retail while schools across Yorkshire struggle with unfilled teaching positions. This episode examines how central government creates teacher shortages through political choices, not economic necessity. Blocked Britain contains strong language and adult themes.