Hazel Shearing
Hazel Shearing follows the consequences of education policy for the choices young people have, tracing how reforms to schools, colleges and universities shape routes into work and further study. She is an education correspondent at the BBC, covering England’s education system from early secondary school through higher education and skills. Her work combines policy reporting, data-driven analysis and on-the-ground voices to show what national decisions mean for pupils, students and their families. Before focusing on education, she worked in online news and curation roles, including at BBC News and a digital outlet, bringing breaking news and audience-focused experience into her beat.
Technical and vocational education in England
Shearing spends significant time on technical and vocational routes, looking at how they sit alongside traditional academic pathways. In her coverage of the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc) and Andy Burnham’s plan to expand it nationally, she sets out how vocational courses, work experience from Year 10 and links to local industries are meant to offer clearer routes into skilled jobs.
She details ambition and reality: targets such as guaranteeing every young person a clear path to good jobs by 2030 and securing 45 days of work experience by age 19 are set against current rollout figures and workplace opportunities. Her reporting stresses that models developed in one city-region will not automatically translate everywhere, raising questions about how technical education can work in areas without strong local industries.
She also follows the growth of degree apprenticeships, where competition in England has quadrupled in three years, using BBC data to show how these hybrid work–study routes have become significantly harder to access.
Student loans and higher education finance
Student finance is a core strand of Shearing’s beat, and she returns to it in multiple formats. She has reported on plans to give university applicants in England clearer information about student loans before they commit, focusing on how terms and long-term costs are explained at the point of decision. In a piece on a government presentation to teenagers that compared student loan repayments to a £30-a-month phone contract, she shows how official communications downplayed the scale of the obligation, and how those messages can shape expectations and borrowing decisions. Her reporting on student loan repayment rates as an “unsustainable burden” looks at how much graduates are actually paying back, combining figures with case studies to show the strain repayments place on individuals and public finances.
Taken together, these stories show how she uses policy documents, historic presentations and current data to test whether young people are being given a truthful, usable picture of the cost of higher education.
Teenagers not in education, employment or training
Shearing closely tracks the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training, treating Neet figures as a key indicator of how well the system serves teenagers. In live coverage of official data showing 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 outside education, employment or training between April and June, she guides readers through what the numbers mean and how they fit into longer-term trends.
She then digs into gaps in those statistics, reporting on warnings that tens of thousands of Neet teenagers are missing from official counts and exploring how this undercounting affects support and policy.
Her work highlights the practical consequences of being off the radar, including missed interventions and unrecorded hardship for young people who have left school without a clear next step. Across these pieces she combines headline figures with the perspectives of commissioners and other officials, using Neet data to test whether education and training pathways are genuinely open and navigable.
School standards, exams and support
Shearing’s coverage of schools ranges from infrastructure and rebuilding programmes to classroom outcomes and pupil support. In a radio documentary on the Department for Education’s school rebuilding programme, she investigates why construction companies are slow to sign multi-million pound contracts and what that means for pupils learning in buildings waiting to be rebuilt.
She reports on changes to free school meal rules that would make around 500,000 more pupils eligible, examining how policy shifts translate into concrete support for children at school. Her work on GCSE results, produced with BBC Verify and the data journalism team, distils key takeaways from results day and looks at how the grade gap between boys and girls is narrowing. She also covers behavioural and cultural interventions, such as plans to send boys on courses to tackle misogyny in schools, indicating an interest in how schools respond to social issues alongside academic ones.
Across these stories she links funding decisions, physical environments, assessment trends and pastoral programmes to the daily reality of school life.
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.
Beth Kennedy
Beth Kennedy is editor at The PIE News and stands out for reporting on how UK policy, institutional strategy and new delivery models reshape international education. Her beat covers UK study visa rules, international student flows, Home Office and UCAS data, alternative study pathways, language schools, and mergers and acquisitions across the sector. She reports on the practical effects of visa changes, scholarship schemes, online and transnational education, school closures, job losses and sector consolidation. Her work is direct and data-led, with clear explanations of complex systems and a focus on what policy and market shifts mean for universities, language schools and private training organisations. She has over a decade in specialist media, including years reporting for primary healthcare professionals before joining The PIE in 2024.
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.