Beth Kennedy
Beth Kennedy focuses on how UK policy, institutional strategy and new delivery models reshape pathways for international students and education providers. She is editor at The PIE News, an outlet for professionals in international education, and has over a decade of experience in specialist media. Her reporting centres on the intersection of study visa rules, market shifts and the operational realities of universities, language schools and private training organisations.
UK study visas and international student data
Much of Kennedy’s recent work tracks the impact of UK study visa policy on international student flows and sector planning. She covers Home Office data releases in detail, including reporting that sponsored study visa main applicants in the year to August 2026 fell 16% compared with the previous year, and setting those numbers against sector concerns about recruitment and retention.
Her articles on visa trends highlight both headline shifts, such as overall increases in study visa applications, and the sharp decline in dependant numbers following rule changes for postgraduate-taught students introduced in 2024. She regularly uses UCAS statistics to show record levels of international undergraduate applicants, placing these figures alongside institutional strategies and political debate about the role of overseas students in the UK system. In pieces responding to external claims about student finance, she gives space to universities and sector bodies to rebut mischaracterisations of international students’ access to loans and public money.
Across this strand, her coverage is data-led and framed around what changing visa rules and application patterns mean for the composition of UK cohorts and for the wider international education market.
Alternative pathways and online and transnational education
Kennedy also reports on initiatives that create new study routes for students affected by UK visa restrictions and displacement. In her coverage of universities joining forces to offer study pathways for students impacted by the government’s “visa brake”, she tracks how multiple institutions commit scholarship places through a coordinated scheme aimed at those unable to secure standard UK study visas. She details how these places are delivered through online learning and transnational education, underscoring that such modes are currently the only available pathways for new students from certain countries to gain a UK postgraduate qualification while restrictions are in place.
Her reporting explains how sector-wide platforms link universities with humanitarian networks to identify and support crisis-affected students, naming specific partners in regions such as India and Cameroon. This strand of her work emphasises practical mechanisms - scholarship structures, remote delivery models and cross-border coordination - rather than high-level advocacy, and shows an interest in how policy workarounds are implemented on the ground.
Language schools and institutional viability
Kennedy devotes significant attention to the fortunes of English language centres and the financial pressures facing providers. Her reporting on long-established language schools closing after decades of operation documents timelines, locations and administrative processes, as well as the reasons given by owners for winding down.
In coverage of EC English Language Centres closing sites in Bristol and Montreal, she situates those decisions within the group’s global footprint and the broader challenges in the language teaching market. These pieces focus on concrete outcomes - school closures, job losses and changes to student options - rather than commentary, giving readers a clear view of how market and policy conditions translate into institutional change.
Taken together, they form a recurring thread in her work on the resilience and consolidation of language education providers.
Deals, acquisitions and sector restructuring
Another established strand of Kennedy’s reporting is on mergers, acquisitions and other corporate moves in the education sector. She has covered a private equity firm buying a 50% stake in Arden University, setting out the terms of the deal and its implications for the university’s ownership structure. In her coverage of PeopleCert acquiring the commercial awarding and skills training arm of City & Guilds London Institute, she details what parts of the organisation are included and what this means for the delivery of training and qualifications. Her reporting on INTO University Partnerships acquiring Kings Education tracks how the transaction fits into a wider pattern of consolidation among pathway providers. These stories are concise and transactional, focused on who is buying what, on what scale, and with what stated strategic intent, and they sit alongside her broader interest in how ownership changes affect the provision of international and vocational education.
Across these strands, Kennedy’s work at The PIE News is characterised by a steady focus on structural change in international education: visa policy and student flows, alternative study pathways under constraint, the viability of language schools, and corporate deals reshaping the sector. Her background in specialist media, including years reporting for primary healthcare professionals before joining The PIE in 2024, underpins a direct, factual style that prioritises clear explanations of complex systems over opinion.
4 more education journalists.
Ajit Niranjan
Ajit Niranjan links climate science, policy and hard numbers to how extreme weather and environmental damage disrupt daily life, public services and industry. He is European environment correspondent at the Guardian. His beat includes violent heat, pollution, wildfires, air quality, EU green policy, corporate responsibility, energy transition, clean home heating, public health and long-term risks to landscapes and ecosystems. He examines how lobbying, supply chains and regulation shape environmental harm, from data centres and fish farms to fossil fuel industries. His reporting covers schools, hospitals, transport, homes and infrastructure as climate stress points. He previously reported on climate for DW News. He combines data, scientific research, eyewitness accounts and on-the-ground reporting. He also produces explainers, dossiers, factsheets and Q&As that translate complex technical debates into clear, precise language.
Albert Tait
Albert Tait is Education Editor at The Telegraph, leading coverage of schools and universities as institutions whose decisions have direct consequences for staff and students. He focuses on how regulators, senior leaders and governing bodies respond when safety, standards or integrity are under scrutiny, and how those responses affect classrooms and lecture halls. His work links school inspections and teacher safety to regulatory frameworks and conditions on the ground, and he reports on incidents such as knife attacks and “Code Red” alerts with attention to immediate impact and emergency protocols. He produces multi-part investigations into university governance, including extensive reporting on Cambridge’s handling of Jason Arday’s appointment and resignation. He also covers curriculum debates such as changes in how scientists view evolution and inheritance. He began at The Telegraph as a news reporter and previously covered community news at a local paper.
Callum Clark
Callum Clark is a multimedia journalist at STV News who covers education through the lens of university finances, restructuring and their impact on students, staff and local services. He focuses on stories where cost‑saving plans, job losses and service closures reshape community life, such as Dundee University’s nursery and botanic garden closures, and sets those decisions within wider restructuring efforts. His reporting is direct and fact driven, built on official documents, statements and precise figures that show both the scale of savings targets and monthly losses, and the number of posts at risk. Clark’s background in local news and public service coverage, including mental health service reforms and redundancy schemes, shapes a methodical style that tracks formal processes while keeping the lived experience of workers, families and service users in view.
Carl Eve
Carl Eve is a crime and safeguarding reporter for Plymouth Live, known for showing how institutions respond when vulnerable people are harmed. He covers abuse, schools, social care, public safety schemes, serious violence, homicide, courts, sentencing, street crime, policing operations, protests and public order. His work has examined child abuse rings, the Vanessa George nursery abuse case, grooming gangs and failures to prosecute offenders. He also reports on night-time safety projects such as the Safe Bus and student volunteer patrols. Eve has years of experience as a specialist crime reporter, with earlier work for local papers and in documentary and radio research. He uses court files, regulatory reports, police input, direct observation and on-the-ground reporting. His clear, factual stories track investigations from first police action through trial, sentencing and institutional accountability.