Kathryn's Story

Meet Kathryn, a 28-year-old graduate from Newcastle-under-Lyme who wanted to train as a teacher in a subject desperately short of qualified professionals across the West Midlands. The classrooms were there, waiting for her. The students needed her expertise. But when she applied for teacher training, she discovered that HM Treasury and the Department for Education had slashed bursaries for her subject area, despite critical regional shortages. Westminster set national recruitment targets that ignored local disparities, treating teacher training funding as though the government must find money rather than create it. This is her story of how political choices in Whitehall blocked her path into the classroom. *This episode contains discussion of financial stress and career disappointment.*