Niamh's Story

Meet Niamh, 26, from Sheffield Central in Yorkshire and The Humber. She wanted to become a teacher in a subject with critical shortages, but found herself blocked by Westminster's funding choices. The Department for Education reduced teacher training bursaries for shortage subjects in her region, setting national recruitment targets that ignore local needs. HM Treasury's spending rules force departments to compete for fixed pots, as though the government that creates the currency must first find it somewhere. The classrooms were there. The graduates who wanted to teach were there. What was missing was the political decision to connect them. This episode explores how central government choices create artificial scarcity in education. Views expressed are the presenter's own.