Holly O'Mahony
Holly O’Mahony writes about education as it intersects with culture and performance, using theatre and lifestyle journalism to examine how adolescence, school life and gender are shaped and represented. Her work for the Guardian includes a review of Physical Education, a boisterous, cliché-busting lesson on teen masculinity set around school sport, bringing classroom dynamics into the frame through stagecraft rather than policy reportage. Her perspective is rooted in theatre criticism and culture writing, so educational themes are approached through stories, characters and lived experience rather than institutional coverage.
Education, adolescence and teen masculinity on stage
In her Guardian review of Physical Education, O’Mahony focuses on teen masculinity within the setting of a school gym class, showing how classroom and changing-room spaces can become a lens on power, vulnerability and peer pressure. She treats the production as both a piece of theatre and a kind of lesson, stressing its “boisterous” energy and its attempt to bust clichés about how teenage boys behave when watched and when unseen. By grounding an education story in a close reading of staging, dialogue and performance, she turns a topic that might otherwise sit in social policy or psychology into cultural criticism that still speaks directly to how young people experience school.
Theatre critic with a strong stage portfolio
O’Mahony is a culture journalist and theatre critic, with a substantial reviewing portfolio across specialist stage publications. She regularly reviews productions for a dedicated theatre outlet, contributing assessments of new plays, revivals and contemporary performance. Alongside her criticism, she works as a writer and editor for casting and performance industry platforms, including Backstage and its related brands, keeping close to the practical world of actors, auditions and training. This dual role - both critic and editor inside performance-focused media - gives her coverage a working knowledge of how shows are developed and cast, which carries through when she writes about school-set stories and young characters on stage.
Cultural and lifestyle journalism beyond the classroom
Beyond theatre reviews, O’Mahony’s work spans culture and lifestyle journalism, with articles and features across national newspapers and magazines.
Her bylines include fashion and style titles as well as general news and culture outlets, indicating a range that covers everything from the arts to city life and contemporary trends. She uses this broader lifestyle perspective when writing about youth and education, treating classrooms and extracurricular activities as part of a wider social and cultural environment rather than isolated institutions. The mix of fashion, entertainment and cultural reporting in her portfolio means she is comfortable situating school experiences alongside music, theatre, media and leisure, which shapes the kinds of education-adjacent stories she is likely to take on.
Format, tone and what she brings to education stories
O’Mahony writes primarily in the formats of reviews and features, leaning on narrative detail, scene-setting and character to carry arguments about adolescence and school life. Her criticism is grounded in clear description of performances and staging, but it also attends to themes such as masculinity, friendship and the pressures young people face, making her education-related work more reflective and interpretive than data-driven. She draws on a culture-and-lifestyle voice that is direct and accessible, aligning classroom and teenage experiences with the wider youth culture she covers elsewhere.
For education stories that touch on drama, school productions, youth theatre or the portrayal of students in popular culture, her background as a practising theatre critic and culture journalist shapes a distinctive angle compared with a general education news reporter.
4 more education journalists.
Abby Russchen
Abby Russchen ties education, community institutions and individual stories together, showing how policies and decisions register in people’s lives. She reports for CBC on education and community life, working across text, video and photography for different CBC platforms. Her education coverage centres student achievement, provincial and national test results, classroom technology and the forces shaping learning conditions, connecting policy language and expert analysis to observable changes in performance. She treats AI, screens and digital tools as part of the education beat, focusing on their impact on student well-being. She also reports on community institutions and local services, from bank closures and changing city status to small-business growth. Her human-interest features follow people, public memory and recognition, and her long-form background supports detailed, fact-grounded narratives across formats.
Alexa Phillips
Alexa Phillips reports on education as a financial system, tracing who pays, who benefits and who bears the risk when policy changes reshape schools and universities. She covers education policy, funding and regulation for The i Paper, with a consistent focus on money, power and their impact on students and staff. Her reporting follows fees, budgets and reform into classrooms and lecture halls, using concrete figures to show how tax changes, funding mechanisms and loan reforms translate into course cuts, job losses and access. Phillips brings wider experience on public services and regulation, including work on gambling oversight and healthcare access, so education sits in a larger accountability story. She writes straightforward, reported news pieces that combine policy detail, financial data and case studies, built from official records and regular call‑outs to readers affected by the systems she covers.
Alexandra Holyk
Alexandra Holyk is a multi-skilled journalist at CTV News who reports on education and youth issues through the daily lives of students, families, and local communities. She covers school and campus decisions, student safety, youth behaviour, and neighbourhood incidents, with a focus on how they affect the people directly involved. Her work includes stories on graduation choices, concerns about Black students in a school board, federal research funding at the University of Waterloo, and students who helped after a cyclist collision. She also covers vandalism and other local disruptions around schools and neighbourhoods. Holyk pitches, researches, shoots, writes, edits, and presents stories for broadcast and digital platforms. Her previous work includes video journalism for provincial coverage, along with reporting for campus and regional outlets and major Canadian newspapers and business media.
Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier ties system-level themes in Quebec’s school system to the immediate realities of parents and students, treating education as a lived experience rather than an abstract policy field. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy. Her work spans data breaches and digital privacy in schools, institutional conflicts and labour disputes that disrupt study plans, education on the campaign trail, and school infrastructure and land use. She reports on incidents like mass emails exposing sensitive parent data, suspended classes that leave students feeling like bargaining chips, and proposals to turn racetracks into schools. Her background in digital production at another major Canadian broadcaster shapes an online-first reporting style, grounded in specific incidents, clear descriptions, and detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.