Tara Evans
Tara Evans connects education decisions with the realities of money and everyday life, focusing on how university, training and wider consumer choices shape long‑term financial outcomes. She is an experienced consumer and personal finance journalist and editor with more than 15 years’ experience at major UK news brands, leading coverage on household bills, retail trends and economic policies that affect everyday finances. Her education coverage sits inside that consumer brief, examining who truly benefits from going to university and what mounting student debt means over a lifetime.
Who actually benefits from going to university
Evans’ education reporting is framed through the lens of value for money, most clearly in her work on who actually benefits from going to university and why some graduates feel they will never pay their debt off. She treats higher education as a long‑term financial decision rather than a purely academic milestone, asking whether the cost of tuition and living expenses matches the return in earnings and security. Her approach is to interrogate the structure of student finance and the lived impact of repayment terms, using real experiences to test the promise that university study will pay off.
She brings the same straight, practical style she applies to personal finance to questions about access, debt and outcomes in education.
Helping your family save money
Evans’ broader work is rooted in family finances and everyday spending, with a strong emphasis on helping households save money and protect their rights.
At The Sun she has edited and written consumer and money pages that break down the cost of raising children, from baby clothing to essential bills, and she has explicitly set out a mission to help families cut waste and navigate confusing pricing. In a recent investigation into high street baby grow sizes, she combined personal experience with price and sizing checks to show how inconsistent standards and costs hit parents at a sensitive stage. The tone is direct and empathetic: she explains what is happening, why it matters to household budgets, and where parents can push back or change their buying habits.
That family‑focused consumer work gives her education pieces a distinct flavour, because university and training are treated as major family spending decisions alongside childcare, housing and other commitments.
Cost of living and everyday banking
Evans consistently links education and personal finance to the wider cost‑of‑living picture, showing how small shifts in banking and retail design can leave customers feeling forgotten. In her coverage of major high street banks cutting opening hours at dozens of branches, she wrote about how reduced access to in‑person services hurts people who rely on branch staff to manage money and debt. That focus on access and service resonates with student finance, where the terms and systems can be just as opaque as banking products. Across her consumer beat she explains policy changes, corporate decisions and price rises in plain language, with clear detail on who is affected and what can be done. Communications from banks, energy firms or universities are stripped back to the facts, and the impact on everyday lives is put first.
Campaign‑led consumer and finance journalism
Evans’ work is distinguished by its campaign element: she does not only report on problems, she stays with them and pushes for change. As Head of Consumer at The Sun she has led editorial strategy on consumer and personal finance coverage, overseeing investigations, long‑running projects and agenda‑setting campaigns aimed at improving how companies and institutions treat their customers.
Her background includes roles across major national news brands and specialist financial outlets, and her investigations have helped inform broadcast programmes and deeper reporting elsewhere. She is described as combining strong newsroom instincts with a deep understanding of digital audiences and how to make complex topics land in a clear and meaningful way.
In practice that means education stories about student debt sit alongside work on bills, banking and retail, all treated as parts of the same consumer landscape that people have to navigate.
Across education and consumer finance, Evans’ distinguishing thread is a focus on how systems - from student loan schemes to bank opening hours - shape the daily reality of people trying to make ends meet. She writes in plain, accessible prose, grounded in concrete examples and numbers rather than abstract debate, and she uses investigations and campaigns to keep pressure on institutions when that reality falls short. For stories about the true cost of higher education, student finance reform or the crossover between learning and earning, her work sits at the intersection of education policy and real‑world money.
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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.