Lydia Chantler-Hicks
Lydia Chantler-Hicks follows how inspection regimes and workforce policies collide in schools, focusing on what those decisions mean for leaders and teachers on the ground. She is a senior reporter at Schools Week, covering schools with a particular emphasis on Ofsted and the teacher workforce. She brings experience from national and local newsrooms, having worked as a news reporter at the Evening Standard and a local news reporter at KentOnline before joining Schools Week in December 2024. Her work has been recognised with multiple journalism awards, especially for investigations and long-form features.
Heads ‘overwhelmingly negative’ to new Ofsted inspections
Much of Chantler-Hicks’s recent coverage centres on Ofsted’s changing inspection approach and how it is experienced by school staff. In her reporting on school leaders’ overwhelmingly negative reaction to new Ofsted inspections, she concentrates on how accountability mechanisms are reshaping everyday work for heads and their teams. She uses this kind of story to connect policy changes at the inspectorate with morale, workload and trust in the system, keeping the reactions of front-line leaders at the centre of the narrative.
The focus on Ofsted that runs through her brief is underlined by her role description at Schools Week and her professional profiles, which explicitly highlight inspection and workforce as her core themes.
Five things we learned about the teacher workforce from the STRB report
Chantler-Hicks regularly breaks down dense official documents into clear takeaways about the teacher workforce, as shown in her piece on five things learned from a School Teachers’ Review Body report.
In that explainer she pulls out key findings on pay, retention and working conditions and relates them to wider trends in staffing and recruitment. She has also reported on research into teacher retention payments, including analysis of evidence that such incentives are not as effective as first thought, and what that means for long-term workforce planning.
Her feature on “The Shapeshifting 6,500 Teachers Pledge” looks at the promises being made around staffing numbers and how those commitments move over time, again tying headline figures back to the realities of keeping teachers in the classroom. Across these pieces she uses official data, external studies and sector evidence to show how national policy lands in schools’ staffing decisions.
Economics and business teacher numbers just don’t add up
Chantler-Hicks’s investigative work includes subject-specific looks at teacher supply, most notably her feature on economics and business teacher numbers.
That investigation sets out the paradox of more pupils opting to study economics and business while recruitment of specialist teachers in those subjects deteriorates. She reports calls for a dedicated teacher training bursary to tackle what is described as a “chronic” shortage, placing those demands in the context of wider recruitment challenges.
The piece combines national data with testimony from school leaders and sector experts to show how gaps in specialist staffing affect pupils’ access to popular subjects. It fits into her broader pattern of coverage where she links numbers on recruitment and retention to practical consequences for school timetables and curriculum breadth.
Live blog from the NASUWT and NEU conferences
Alongside investigations and explainers, Chantler-Hicks covers education politics in real time through live blogging of major union conferences, such as her joint live blog from the NASUWT and NEU gatherings.
In this format she tracks debates on pay, workload, inspection and industrial action as they unfold, capturing speeches, floor reactions and key votes. The live coverage complements her workforce reporting by showing how union positions and member sentiment shape the policy environment that schools operate within.
Taken together, her conference blogs and analytic pieces present a connected view of the education workforce, from headline statistics and review-body reports through to union strategies and leaders’ responses on the ground.
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.