Jabed Ahmed
Jabed Ahmed is a news reporter at Tes magazine who covers school funding, multi-academy trusts and the policy decisions that shape the school system. His reporting focuses on how financial and structural pressures translate into risks for schools, staff and pupils. He returns to the hard numbers in official forecasts, watchdog reports and trust accounts, and explains what they mean for budgets and provision. Across his work he treats funding, governance and politics as a single story about the sustainability of schools.
School funding, pupil numbers and financial risk
A core strand of Ahmed’s beat is the link between pupil numbers and school finances. He reports on official projections that show pupil rolls falling more sharply than previously expected, and translates those forecasts into concrete implications for primary and secondary schools.
In coverage of watchdog analysis, he highlights the scale of projected shortfalls in per-pupil funding over the coming years and the corresponding pressure on school budgets.
He gives particular attention to how demographic change interacts with the funding formula. Recent pieces break down estimates of how many fewer pupils are expected over specific timeframes and how many millions of pounds in funding this represents for schools. He then connects those figures to emerging responses, such as restructuring in large academy groups or redundancies in central teams.
The emphasis is on quantifying risk and showing how abstract projections are already reshaping staffing and planning on the ground.
Multi-academy trusts and structural change
Ahmed’s coverage of multi-academy trusts centres on governance decisions, mergers and break-ups. He reports on trusts being wound up after controversy over behaviour policies, tracking how multiple schools are transferred to new organisations when trustees acknowledge the need for change. In another line of coverage he follows proposed trust mergers that are later abandoned after strong opposition, setting out what this means for leadership, oversight and local relationships.
Alongside restructuring stories, he covers research on attainment in academy trusts, explaining studies that find substantially higher gains in trusts compared with other settings. He sets findings from sector bodies against the wider debate about the trust model, making clear how these results feed into arguments about expansion or reform. Across these pieces he focuses on trustees, chief executives and chairs, and on the consequences of their decisions for staff, pupils and communities rather than on abstract policy alone.
Teacher pay, unions and industrial action
Teacher pay and union strategy form another recurring thread in Ahmed’s work. He reports union warnings that a significant share of schools cannot afford agreed pay rises, spelling out the proportion of institutions affected and the scale of the funding gap. In related coverage he follows school leader unions as they move towards ballots on industrial action, clarifying the reasons given, the thresholds involved and the timelines.
These stories sit at the intersection of finance and workforce. Ahmed links pay settlements to existing budget pressures, showing how rising costs combine with falling rolls and static funding to create difficult choices for school leaders.
He gives space to union positions while also reflecting the concerns of heads and trust leaders about balancing staff retention, educational quality and solvency. The result is a detailed view of pay disputes as systemic issues rather than isolated negotiations.
Policy guidance, regulation and party politics
Beyond funding and trusts, Ahmed tracks how policy guidance and political decisions shape everyday practice in schools.
He reports on updated government guidance on school uniforms, outlining what has changed and what it means for school policies and family costs. He covers legal challenges such as High Court battles over phone bans, explaining the arguments and the potential impact on school rules and student behaviour.
His political reporting follows parties and figures as they set out education positions.
Recent pieces include coverage of proposals to return to single-phrase inspection grades and the appointment of a Reform UK education spokesperson with a prominent national profile. In these articles he concentrates on how such moves could alter accountability, inspection pressure and the broader narrative around schools.
Policy, guidance and party manoeuvres are treated as part of the same system that determines how schools are run and judged.
Role and background
Ahmed is a news reporter at Tes magazine, having joined the title in September 2025. He focuses consistently on stories about school funding, multi-academy trusts and school leader unions. Before his current role he worked as a news reporter at a national newspaper, which informs his emphasis on clear, data-led coverage and on connecting sector detail to wider public debates.
Across his recent output, Ahmed’s work is characterised by careful use of figures, close attention to trust governance, and a sustained interest in the intersection of finance, workforce and policy. His stories often begin with official reports or policy announcements and follow them through to their practical consequences for schools and the people who run them.
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