Robert Williams
Robert Williams reports on how education policy and institutional decisions shape life in classrooms and communities, using long-term projects to connect local stories to wider provincial systems.
Education funding and Catholic school projects
Williams covers the mechanics and impact of provincial funding decisions on local school infrastructure, including recent reporting on Ontario’s approval of $91 million for four new Catholic school projects in Waterloo Region. He focuses on how capital commitments translate into specific projects, timelines and capacity for Catholic schools, and how those choices affect students and families in the region. His education coverage traces the line from government announcements to changes on the ground, emphasising accountability for how funding is allocated and delivered.
System-level education investigations
Williams works within The Record’s investigations unit, where he has taken on long-term projects examining Conestoga College’s international student enrolment. He has also reported on Ontario’s public education achievement outcomes, looking at how the system measures performance and where it falls short for students and schools. Another strand of his work focuses on the Government of Ontario’s COVID-19 pandemic response, analysing how policies affected education delivery and the operation of schools over time.
Across these projects, he treats education as a system to be scrutinised, tracing decisions from ministries and institutions through to their consequences for learners.
Features that connect policy to lived experience
Williams is described as a feature writer for the Waterloo Region Record, and his investigations are built around narrative reporting as well as data and documents. His work combines detailed policy analysis with reporting that follows students, educators and families through the effects of international enrolment strategies, achievement frameworks and pandemic-era rules. Rather than staying at the level of official statements, he uses longer formats to document how institutional decisions feel in classrooms, residence halls and households, and how those experiences reveal gaps in the system.
This approach has contributed to his recognition as an award-winning feature journalist, with honours for his work on complex public issues.
Scope beyond the local beat
While Williams reports for The Record, his work has appeared in publications across Canada, including the Toronto Star, iPolitics and the Telegraph-Journal. That broader reach reflects a focus on education and public policy stories that resonate beyond a single community, particularly where local reporting surfaces questions of national significance.
His selection as one of 10 journalists in Canada and the United States for the 2026 Arthur F. Burns fellowship, through which he joins Die Zeit’s education desk in Germany, underlines his interest in comparative education systems and international perspectives on schooling and policy.
Together, his local reporting, investigative features and international fellowship work position him as a journalist who treats education as a structural issue, not just a series of discrete school stories.
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.