you can turn this into chud politics because its more fun to rant about but the truth is that its the same as every area of public service. the tories ran everything down because they believe in every market except the labour market. despite knowing that nhs hospitals were writing to councils trying to get them to block aldi and lidl from opening new stores because they were losing a fifth of their workforce whenever one opened. its the same with schools (because they did culture war shit on teachers and froze their pay), the average class size is well over 30 now because they can't find anyone to do it, the average teacher has less than two years of experience and will leave within three. teach first has been acting like a kind of draft on degree holders that can't find work in three months of graduation but even that isn't filling the leaking bucket. they recruited something like 8% of their target of specialist teachers in secondary, there are even shortages in english literature and art now. be clear about this: women with 3rd class degrees in english literature from shit universities think they can do better than being the head of english in a secondary school. only pe meets targets. the civil service is larger than it used to be but again mainly because skilled people can't be arsed and their target has been to try and bulk it out with people who would otherwise be working in a chicken factory. this is to note that while most people think of the civil service as sir humphrey types, its mainly hmrc, dvla and so on.  defence and the police are the same. they've been attacking people working in these professions for over a decade and froze their pay in 2010 for the same period and are obsessed with removing all other incentives (e.g., constant ranting about wfh or part-time contracts, again, competitors in the labour market paying more don't do this). i don't know why people act like this is a surprise.
United Kingdom