Zenaida's Story

In this episode of Blocked Britain, we meet Zenaida, a 27-year-old from Croydon East who wanted to train as a teacher in London's schools. Despite critical teacher shortages across the capital, the Department for Education reduced training bursaries for her subject area. The classrooms were there, qualified graduates like Zenaida were ready to train, but Treasury spending rules forced education departments to compete for fixed pots of funding rather than meeting actual need. This is the story of how Westminster's political choices, not resource constraints, are blocking the next generation of teachers from entering London's schools when they're needed most. Blocked Britain is produced independently and receives no government or corporate funding.