Richard Adams
Richard Adams is education editor at the Guardian, covering how the policies, governance and culture of the UK’s schools and universities affect the people inside them. His beat centres on institutions under scrutiny, from fraud investigations to watchdog interventions, and the way formal decisions translate into day‑to‑day experience for students and staff. He has reported for the Guardian for more than two decades and has focused on education since 2013, giving his coverage depth across both school and higher education systems.
University governance, misconduct and oversight
Adams devotes significant attention to how universities are run and what happens when governance fails or is challenged. His reporting on a fraud investigation at the University of Greater Manchester looks at alleged financial misconduct in a relatively small institution and the implications of a major police inquiry for its students and staff, rather than treating it as a purely crime story. In coverage of Goldsmiths College, he sets out how an independent inquiry found a culture of antisemitism had been allowed to build up over a number of years, and how the institution responded with an apology to Jewish students and staff.
Across these pieces he follows formal processes - inquiries, investigations, and panels - and links them to accountability inside universities, showing how governance issues become lived problems on campuses.
Campus free speech and academic freedom
A recurring strand in Adams’s work is the regulation of speech and academic freedom in higher education.
He has reported on proposals by the government’s campus free speech tsar that state students and staff can make provocative statements on sensitive subjects, including Israel and Gaza, provided they do not breach laws on incitement or harassment. In that coverage he examines the detail of watchdog guidance and the legal thresholds it invokes, while also spelling out the practical consequences for universities that must interpret and enforce those rules. Taken together with his pieces on institutions under investigation, his work on free speech shows a consistent interest in how regulators, universities and individuals negotiate the boundaries of acceptable conduct and expression in academic settings.
Schools policy and special educational needs
Adams’s education beat includes schools policy and the treatment of pupils with special educational needs, particularly where public campaigns collide with local authority decisions.
He has covered Jamie Oliver’s criticism of Essex for not formally recognising dyslexia as a special educational need, reporting the chef’s description of being “disgusted” with his home county. In that piece he explains both the personal advocacy and the underlying policy question: whether and how local authorities record and support dyslexia in their systems for special educational needs.
This kind of reporting sits alongside his university coverage and shows he follows issues from national debate down to specific decisions affecting families and pupils in a particular area.
Long‑term specialist on the education beat
Adams brings a long view to the education beat, having reported for the Guardian for more than twenty years and focused on education since 2013.
Over that period he has built up a portfolio that tracks institutions through cycles of expansion, crisis and reform, often returning to the same universities and policy themes as inquiries unfold and new rules are introduced. His recent work shows a consistent pattern: he takes stories where education overlaps with law, finance or politics, and reports them through the lens of their impact on students, staff and the integrity of the institutions involved. The result is coverage that treats education not as a lifestyle subject but as a public system with real power, responsibility and consequences.
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.