Education Journalistsin the UK

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 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 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 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.

Carl Eve is a crime and safeguarding reporter for Plymouth Live, known for showing how institutions respond when vulnerable people are harmed. He covers abuse, schools, social care, public safety schemes, serious violence, homicide, courts, sentencing, street crime, policing operations, protests and public order. His work has examined child abuse rings, the Vanessa George nursery abuse case, grooming gangs and failures to prosecute offenders. He also reports on night-time safety projects such as the Safe Bus and student volunteer patrols. Eve has years of experience as a specialist crime reporter, with earlier work for local papers and in documentary and radio research. He uses court files, regulatory reports, police input, direct observation and on-the-ground reporting. His clear, factual stories track investigations from first police action through trial, sentencing and institutional accountability.

Cerys Turner is a senior reporter at Tes magazine whose beat sits where education policy, school accountability, professional conditions and technology meet. She tracks how decisions by government, regulators and unions shape the working lives of teachers and school leaders, focusing on pay, conditions and the systems that govern schools. Her reporting covers changes in the Department for Education’s leadership, ministerial teams and advisory bodies, linking personnel and governance shifts to their impact on schools. Ofsted and school accountability are central to her work, including board appointments, inspection policy and the review following the Ruth Perry case. She breaks stories on teacher pay awards, strike ballots and union strategy, and examines AI and edtech in classrooms as part of the wider system. Previously, she reported for The Sunday Times, Metro and The Big Issue.

Charlie Watts focuses on how local institutions and events shape everyday life across education, community news, and culture. He reports for the Weston Mercury and North Somerset Times, with a core beat in local schools and education standards. His stories on inspections and performance changes highlight what they mean for pupils, staff, families, and the school day, using direct quotes and specific findings while keeping the tone measured and factual. He also covers day-to-day news and neighbourhood initiatives, showing how decisions by institutions, charities, and community groups affect services and opportunities. Alongside hard news he writes culture and lifestyle pieces on events, entertainment, venues, festivals, and leisure. Before this role he worked as a digital reporter and freelance journalist across regional news brands and city-focused sites, building a broad portfolio in local news and community reporting.

Charlotte Hall connects education reporting with local democracy for the Manchester Evening News, treating schools as civic institutions shaped by council and government decisions. She covers school oversight and Ofsted reporting through close reading of inspection documents and formal evaluations, using data, pupil numbers and catchment details to explain what findings mean for families and staff. Her work on industrial action tracks strike schedules, affected year groups and negotiations, linking staff conditions to education quality. Hall reports on regional policy and pathways for pupils, showing how curriculum changes and skills plans align with economic priorities. As a local democracy reporter, she investigates power, money and planning in towns such as Oldham and Bury and contributes to coverage of voter sentiment. Her earlier freelance work focused on climate news, environmental research, nature conservation and local energy projects.

Clare Buchanan stands out for local democracy reporting that follows what council decisions mean in daily life. She works for Fife Today and partner titles, covering schools, public services, budgets and local infrastructure in Fife and Clackmannanshire. Her education reporting tracks school safety, exams, pupil welfare and how councils respond when procedures fail. She also covers committee meetings on rights of way, cycle tracks and major landmarks such as the Forth Bridge, with attention to votes, funding figures, access, maintenance and public accountability. Her work appears across newspapers, digital outlets and broadcast platforms. She has also reported on a national broadcaster’s exam results day live page. Her style is direct and fact-led, with clear headlines, named committees, and details on who spoke, what was decided and how much money was committed.

Daniel Holland stands out for tracing how council decisions and public bodies reshape schools and other essential services through the machinery of local government. He is a local democracy reporter for Chronicle Live and other media partners, and he spends time in council meetings so readers do not have to. His main beat is education infrastructure, with a focus on school safety, funding and the future of buildings, but he also covers planning, regeneration and the wider built environment. He writes about structural failures, inspections, temporary closures, rebuilding bids and the disruption these events bring to pupils, staff and families. His reporting on Mowbray Primary School and Prudhoe Community High School shows his plain, detailed style, with close attention to technical findings, budgets, timelines and accountability.

Daniel Kelly reports for Worcester News, and his work is most distinctive for turning school, business and transport changes into clear, practical news for everyday readers. He covers local education and community stories, focusing on how changes to schools, services and businesses affect routines. He reports schools when wider community issues spill onto education settings, and he keeps the framing narrow and factual. He also tracks openings, closures and licensing changes affecting retailers, supermarkets and the high street, tying planning paperwork and enforcement action to hiring and vacant units. On transport and infrastructure, he writes incident-led coverage of fires, flooding and suspended rail services, with short updates on what is stopped, why, and what alternatives are being arranged. He also writes concise guides to local events and weekend culture.

David Humphreys is a local democracy reporter at the Liverpool Echo. He stands out for tying council decisions to the systems behind them. His beat is education in a broad sense, with a focus on school places, governance, safeguarding, children’s services and local authority policy. He also covers housing, homelessness, public assets, policing and equality when they affect families and vulnerable people. He follows stories from committee room debate through to their impact on pupils, families and communities. He uses committee reports, reviews and strategy papers to track accountability, budgets, staffing and reform. His reporting shows how public bodies respond to criticism and how their decisions shape provision, oversight and support across the city.

Elena Chiujdea is a reporter who explains local government, planning and education in clear, step-by-step detail for residents. She covers council decisions for the Maidenhead Advertiser, focusing on how policies and developments affect schools, children’s services and community facilities. Her work on council finances and local democracy tracks council tax debates, petitions against rises, budget plans and medium-term financial strategies, with close attention to meeting times, votes and key quotes. In planning, she reports development proposals from pub refurbishments and housing conversions to gyms, cafés and major leisure schemes, setting out applications, objections, support and committee rulings. Education stories sit within this governance brief, including special school plans, neighbourhood plan votes and sports facility upgrades, always linked to wider questions of land use, investment and the practical consequences for local services.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist who writes about education as lived experience, using her own family and working life to show how schooling, exams and higher education feel at home rather than in policy abstracts. Her beat sits at the intersection of schooling, parenting and the changing labour market, with recurring focus on parental pressure, attendance, school routines, milestones and whether children should go to university. She links education to careers, financial independence and the future of work, covering AI-resistant degrees, careers guidance, generational economic strain and classroom technology. She writes often on home schooling, school refusal and alternative education models, balancing curiosity with scepticism and drawing out narrative detail and emotional stakes. Beyond education, she has a long record in features and profiles for outlets including the Guardian, the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Psychologies and The Believer, and is author of the memoir She Left Me The Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me and What Would Barbra Do?.

Emma Walker is a news editor whose education and schools coverage is strongly community-oriented and visually led, built around large-scale photo features of school leavers. She works across Shropshire Star with responsibility for education and schools news, and also holds a senior digital role with Express & Star, giving her a cross-title view of local education stories. Her work includes assembling dozens of school leavers’ photographs from many different classrooms into single pieces that mark key milestones and the transition out of primary education. She uses simple framing text with extensive image galleries and steers coverage towards the everyday life of schools and their communities, prioritising pupils, families, staff and whole-school events over policy or commentary. Her background in digital and live news editing on regional titles shapes how school content is packaged for online audiences.

Fraser Simpson focuses on how schools, youth organisations and employers support people, with inclusion, opportunity and everyday impact at the centre. He is a reporter for the Bournemouth Echo and Dorset Echo, which he joined in February 2026. His work covers school recognition, inclusive culture, environmental education, sustainability projects, SEND support, youth opportunities, charity campaigns, workplace culture and practical service news. Notable pieces include coverage of Port Regis awards, a seven-year-old’s artwork being selected for the Royal Academy’s Young Artists’ Summer Show, and supported employment for people with additional needs. He also reports on school gardens, climate events, community fundraising, workplace awards, gardening workshops and local weather. His reporting is direct and service-oriented, explaining awards, inspections, initiatives and who they are intended to help.

Freddie Whittaker is editor of national education newspaper Schools Week, leading coverage of schools with a focus on how policy and politics shape classrooms and families long after reforms are announced. He covers Westminster and Whitehall, school funding, industrial relations, unions and children’s rights, treating academies, trusts and maintained schools as part of a wider system shaped by government priorities and regulation. His reporting on assessment and SATs examines how accountability regimes influence the curriculum, teaching time and pupils’ experience over multiple years. He regularly reports on education and poverty, including schools providing basic household items to families, linking funding debates to real hardship. Whittaker has written about education policy for over a decade, previously at FE Week and regional newspapers, and is a regular contributor on education and politics for the New Statesman. He also presents the Schools Week podcast, interviewing key figures on the direction of education policy.

Garrett Baylor Stell is an education correspondent at The Herald whose distinct focus is how the international student boom has reshaped Scottish universities’ finances, priorities and business models. He reports on structural shifts in university funding, overseas recruitment and policy decisions, using precise figures, enrolment data and interviews with decision-makers. His beat spans international students, clearing and admissions, national exam results, student pathways, university leadership, industrial relations, classroom practice and comparative policy debates. Stell tracks the rise and decline of international entrants, postgraduate taught programmes, and tuition fee dependence, and co-leads coverage of Scotland’s exam results. He covers governance, strikes and leadership change, as well as teaching methodologies and racial equity. With a specialist background in education reporting, he links institutional strategy to the lived experience of students, staff and families.

Georgia Barrow is editor of The Comet and covers education with a close focus on how school environments and initiatives shape daily life for pupils and staff. Her reporting centres on primary schools, outdoor play, wellbeing, inclusion and the quality of the school day. She uses specific programmes and awards, including the gold OPAL award for outdoor play, to show how ideas about learning and play work in practice. Her stories explain changes to playgrounds, routines, staffing and resources, with detail on where children play, what materials they use and how staff support them. She writes about schools as part of community life, focusing on effects for pupils, staff and families rather than league tables, exam results or national policy. Her approach is detailed, plain and observational, rooted in everyday experience.

Georgia Luckhurst is a journalist at Times Higher Education who covers how university teaching, student experience and arts provision are reshaped by policy, funding and technology. She links classroom practice and institutional decisions to wider sector pressures, showing how regulation, skills agendas and international enrolment targets affect students and staff. Her core beat is teaching and student issues, including device-free teaching debates and the impact of course closures, assessment changes and support reforms. She also reports on education policy, skills strategies, student loans and international recruitment, using data, forecasts and senior sector voices. With a background in arts journalism at The Stage and Arts Professional and a degree in English from the University of St Andrews, she brings a strong arts and specialist institutions focus. Her work combines straight news and in-depth features with clear explanations of complex governance and climate-linked technology questions.

Grace McGachy is a broadcast journalist at Greatest Hits Radio whose education reporting focuses on how Ofsted inspections affect school leaders’ mental health and career decisions. She covers inspection-related anxiety, distress, resignations and early retirement, including the aftermath of headteacher Ruth Perry’s death and the impact of changes to the inspection framework. Her reporting links individual experiences to wider questions about accountability and reform. She combines survey findings, percentages and specific outcomes with direct testimony from headteachers, showing how policy affects school life. She highlights that nearly 70% of 100 surveyed school leaders reported a negative mental-health impact under the new system. Her clear broadcast style uses direct language, strong leads, key statistics and quotes to make complex education issues accessible in digital articles and concise news bulletins.

Grace Wood is an online BBC journalist whose distinct beat combines education, serious crime and court reporting through a regional news lens. She covers universities and their role in public life, including Bradford University’s honorary doctorate for broadcaster Chris Kamara. She also reports on violence and public safety, including a fatal street attack in Horsforth and the killing of a man in Ecclesall Woods, Sheffield. Her court coverage includes county lines drug cases involving heroin and crack cocaine offences in Bradford. Since 2024, she has written concise digital stories for BBC regional audiences. Her reporting uses clear timelines, named institutions and verified developments. She focuses on what happened, where, when and who was involved, as well as the effects on communities. Her work tracks police action, court proceedings and institutional decisions without speculation.

Graham Robson reports on how institutions shape the lives, rights and safety of LGBTQ+ people, with a focus on education settings and the wider culture wars around gender and sexuality. He is online editor at Scene Magazine, an independent publication focused on LGBTQ+ living and stories that matter to queer communities across the UK and beyond. He covers how universities and schools handle gender identity, speech and harassment, and how formal procedures respond when prejudice emerges in teaching spaces. He follows police, courts and authorities in cases involving LGBTQ+ people, tracking accountability, hate incidents and legal reforms. He reports on politics, funding and public controversies affecting LGBTQ+ organisations, as well as corporate conduct and queer culture, venues and Pride events. His work is news-driven, document-based and centred on legal, political and institutional detail.

Greg Lambert covers education as part of a wider brief on community life, using local stories about schools, culture and public services to show how learning and opportunity play out day to day. He is a broadcast and online news journalist, writer and presenter for Beyond Radio, and his work sits where classrooms, creative projects, civic decisions and popular culture meet. His background as a broadcaster and author shapes a direct, explanatory style that turns school initiatives and youth stories into clear narratives centred on pupils, teachers and programmes. He reports on creative learning, heritage exhibitions, arts collaborations, public services, council tax, infrastructure, refugee resettlement, reality TV families, sport and entertainment. He has written three books on the revival of British wrestling, hosts a wrestling podcast and presents regular radio shows, using this experience to tell clear stories about ambition, resilience and entertainment industries.

Hayley Clarke’s distinctive focus is how education systems serve disabled and neurodivergent pupils and their families. She is an education reporter at the BBC, covering special educational needs and disability, school policy, funding, oversight, student welfare and rights. Her reporting examines how rules, budgets and legal duties affect children, families, teachers and schools. She has investigated disparities in outcomes, the cost of SEND provision, support for autistic children, school funding pressures, term-time holiday fines, Ofsted inspections, free school meals, social media restrictions, period poverty, youth mental health and student finance. She has contributed to major television investigations into misconduct in schools and notable long-form reporting on autism support. A former primary teacher, she combines classroom experience with data, interviews, case studies and investigative reporting. She works across online articles, podcasts, radio, social video and television.

Hazel Shearing follows how education policy shapes the real choices young people have, focusing on the routes they take into work and further study. She is an education correspondent at the BBC, covering England’s education system from early secondary school through higher education and skills. Her work blends policy reporting, data-driven analysis and on-the-ground voices to show what national decisions mean for pupils, students and their families. She spends significant time on technical and vocational education, including the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate and degree apprenticeships, and tracks student finance, testing whether young people get a truthful picture of loan costs. She closely follows Neet figures and what they reveal about teenagers left without a clear next step. Her coverage of schools spans rebuilding programmes, free school meals, GCSE results and efforts to tackle issues such as misogyny, linking funding, environments and pastoral support to daily school life.

Hilary Osborne tracks how government and company decisions affect ordinary people’s finances. She is consumer and money editor at the Guardian, where she has spent most of her career covering personal finance, consumer protection and the cost of education. Her beat includes banking, saving, borrowing, spending and student finance. She examines loan structures, interest rates, repayment terms, contracts and product design, with a focus on transparency and fair treatment. Her reporting combines practical guidance with scrutiny of policy, regulators and corporate behaviour. She has covered major social media and technology companies entering public markets and co-authored a Guardian article on the cruelty and weak regulation of live animal exports. She explains wider business and financial trends through their effects on households, students, workers and consumers.

Isabella Perrin is a senior digital journalist at The Reading Chronicle. Her reporting is fact-first and tightly organised, with a clear focus on education, court coverage, and local incidents. She covers school life, classrooms, local courts, and emergency services, and she writes in short, plain sentences. Her education stories centre on people and institutions, such as a primary school teaching assistant retiring after 34 years. Her court reports present cases in a quick, public-record style, with names, offences, and outcomes. She also covers live incidents and safety alerts, including events that affect residents and official responses. She leads digital news work while also reporting.

Jabed Ahmed is a news reporter at Tes magazine whose work treats school funding, governance and politics as a single story about the sustainability of schools. He covers school funding, multi-academy trusts and school leader unions, focusing on how financial and structural pressures translate into risks for staff and pupils. He returns to hard numbers in official forecasts, watchdog reports and trust accounts, and explains what they mean for budgets and provision. A core strand of his beat is the link between pupil numbers and school finances, quantifying risk and showing how projections drive restructuring and redundancies. He reports on trust governance decisions, mergers and break-ups, and teacher pay, unions and industrial action. He also covers policy guidance, regulation and party politics, following official reports and announcements through to their practical consequences for schools.

James McEnaney is a freelance journalist and author who specialises in Scottish education, politics and freedom of information, known for in-depth, data-led reporting on schools and accountability. He is the education writer for The Herald and also works on books and long-form projects about modern Scotland and contemporary classrooms. His beat covers policy analysis, classroom realities, children’s welfare, teacher recruitment and retention, workforce pressure and classroom conditions. He explains national and international datasets, including Programme for International Student Assessment results and figures on additional support needs. A former teacher and lecturer, he uses open data, freedom of information requests, public records and interviews with practitioners, charity leaders and innovators, packaging complex quantitative and qualitative evidence into long reads for non-specialist audiences.

Jessica Rothwell is a digital reporter at The Oldham Times who connects education coverage to wider changes in Oldham. She reports on school structures and governance, including academy conversions, and explains formal decisions clearly for parents and residents. She also covers town centre regeneration, public responses to new plans, consultation and community feedback. Her wider beat includes local development and public-interest stories across crime, justice and environmental concerns. Rothwell describes her patch as “all things Oldham” and invites residents to raise issues, giving her reporting a responsive, community-led focus. She works in a straightforward, high-volume digital style that keeps pace with daily developments. She has written more than a thousand articles, with coverage also appearing across other local and regional titles within the same group and through wider syndication.

Joseph Blakely is a reporter at The Argus who covers education, with a focus on major school projects and the decisions that shape them. He reports on large changes to the school estate, including the planned rebuild of one of Sussex’s largest schools as a key decision date approaches. His beat centres on prominent schools, project timelines, and formal decision points. He tracks how governance and planning move these developments toward action, giving a clear view of what is happening at major education institutions. His reporting treats looming decisions as central to the story, not background detail.

Juliette Rowsell reports on how financial, political and technological pressures are reshaping work and welfare across higher education. She writes for Times Higher Education on employment issues, teaching and technology, with a focus on workforce reform, industrial relations and the student experience. Her core beat covers job cuts, restructures, two-tier workforces, pensions, strikes and contract change, along with campus crises, student wellbeing, AI marking, generative AI deals, regulation, free speech, political neutrality, diversity and equality. She tracks how universities use subsidiary companies, how pension schemes affect staffing, and how management decisions shape teaching, assessment and daily life for staff and students. Her reporting is detailed and policy driven, linking sector rules to practical outcomes.

Kelsey Maxwell is a chief reporter who focuses on positive, people-centred stories across education, community life and charity. She works at the St Helens Star, where she has reported since 2016 and has held a senior role since 2021, combining reporting with oversight of coverage and presentation. Her beat sits where local institutions, families and individual readers meet, turning small community developments into clear, accessible news. She reports on schools, nurseries and early years childcare as local anchors, showing how recognition and initiatives are experienced by parents, pupils and staff. Her human-interest and charity pieces centre on resilience, gratitude and community support, using plain copy to highlight emotional stakes. She also covers local business, work and everyday life, treating shops and workplaces as part of the social fabric. Her remit spans breaking news, court, crime, entertainment, lifestyle, business and charity for other Newsquest titles.

Laura Hammond connects education reporting to everyday life, showing how decisions about schools, universities and public services affect people directly. She is a senior journalist and sub editor at the BBC, covering regional news and education. Her beat includes higher education, campus culture, childcare, youth work, health policy, transport, policing and public services. Before joining the BBC, she was a senior reporter and news editor for specialist publications covering education, childcare and youth work, and wrote for websites covering childcare and health and social care. She has produced in-depth pieces on education and NHS policies. Her reporting includes a campaign to save a university theatre backed by Theo James and Ruth Wilson, and strikes halting weekend trams during Nottingham’s Goose Fair. She combines policy knowledge with practical detail, explaining how funding, regulation and service decisions affect students, families, practitioners and local communities.

Lucy Chappell covers fast-moving local news for the Harrogate Advertiser. Her strongest threads are crime, public safety, food hygiene ratings and town centre change, with education stories on schools and colleges when rankings or recognition matter to local families. She reports detailed incidents, police action, court cases and public order issues, and she also tracks restaurant ratings, business openings and everyday standards. Her stories are straightforward and service-led. She focuses on clear timelines, exact places, official statements and what the authorities did next, so readers can quickly see what happened and how it affects Harrogate and North Yorkshire.

Lydia Chantler-Hicks tracks 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 previously worked as a news reporter at the Evening Standard and as 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. She reports on Ofsted’s changing inspection approach, teacher pay, retention, working conditions and subject-specific staffing shortages. She uses official data, external studies, sector evidence and live coverage of major union conferences to show how national policy lands in schools’ staffing decisions, timetables and curriculum breadth.

Mary Harris is a long-serving local reporter for Kent Live whose distinct focus is how changes to schools, community services and local landmarks shape everyday life. She has thousands of published pieces, widely reused across regional outlets, that mix straight reporting with detailed, place-specific storytelling centered on residents, parents and older people. She reports on school culture and standards inside individual schools, alongside children’s services and local provision. She covers hidden hardship, homelessness and the fragility of local support services, including threats to day centres for older people. A large part of her work follows villages, pubs and familiar venues, and how people respond as they decline, close or change hands. She also reports on local events, planning rows, noise and traffic disputes, tracking the practical consequences of official decisions over time.

Matilda Battersby is a senior news reporter at The Bookseller who covers how books, schools and publishing affect people’s lives. Her reporting focuses on education, author access and the social impact of reading, including cancelled school visits by LGBTQ+ authors, parental pressure and children’s access to books and storytellers. She also covers breaking publishing news, exclusives, AI, contracts, rights, workflows and market trends. She combines fast news with long-form features, author profiles and interviews, bringing trade perspectives together with the experiences of writers, teachers and organisers. She has more than a decade of experience across newspapers, magazines and specialist trade titles, including The Independent, The Times, the Evening Standard, the Telegraph and i. She is also a freelance journalist and editor, with specialisms in books, property and family law, and teaches journalism at a university.

Maya George is a digital local democracy reporter and investigations writer whose education coverage sits within a wider focus on councils, crime and development. She works across the Southern Daily Echo and Bournemouth Daily Echo, covering schools, local decision-making and the communities they serve. Her education reporting examines school provision, SEND support and changing school estates, including a planned SEND hub and extra classroom space at Ringwood Junior School. She also follows council-led projects, regeneration, contracts, public money and business changes, including One Horton Heath, Fareham Shopping Centre, a Magnet warehouse and the New Forest Hotel Collection. Her reporting includes court and crime, investigations and Eastleigh. She works across digital news, investigations and social media, using Instagram and TikTok to share stories and reach audiences.

Neil Burkett is a senior journalist and primary editorial contact at the Northamptonshire Telegraph, known for education coverage that treats schools and colleges as part of a long-running civic story. He focuses on the lived experience and history of local schools, exam years and school life, using archives and photo-led retrospectives to show how cohorts and institutions shape the wider community. His “Looking back” school features revisit specific timeframes at named institutions through images, exam results and named students, positioning education as local heritage rather than abstract policy. He also oversees regular columns by hospital governors and supports projects that reuse the paper’s archive in community initiatives, framing institutional voices in clear, accessible formats. His reporting links today’s schools, hospitals and organisations with their past, using concrete years, institutions and visual records to build continuity.

Nootan Sharma is a Principal Correspondent at ThePrint who reports on how India’s exam and recruitment systems shape youth aspirations and access to government jobs. She focuses on small-town candidates, coaching hubs, the UPSC coaching industry, competitive exams and government recruitment. Her work links paper leaks, disputed marks, delayed appointments and opaque grievance processes to a wider trust gap in public recruitment. She also covers coaching centres, celebrity tutors, state-backed programmes, taxation and regulation, showing how exam preparation affects students, families and businesses. Beyond exams, she reports on higher education, professional courses, student disputes, institutional failures and technology gaps. She has reported for Hindustan Times, BBC Hindi and The Lallantop, and has been with ThePrint since 2021. Her reporting is grounded in coaching towns, campuses and aspirant communities, centres student voices and explains policies, procedures and institutional decisions through long-form narrative.

Phil Shepka is an impact journalist who investigates how education, care and public services fail the people who rely on them. He works in the BBC’s investigations and regional news teams, covering schools, special educational needs, disrupted schooling, safeguarding, care homes, hospitals, cost of living, housing, regional politics, transport and exploitation. His reporting links official decisions to their effects on children, families and vulnerable adults. He has covered pupils left without suitable education, complaints about special educational needs plans, abuse in care homes, harm to orthopaedic patients, workers using food banks and rising service charges. He has also examined congestion charge politics and modern slavery in supply chains and retail. His work includes narrative features, including a Swahili-language account of a family tragedy. He reports through investigations, analysis, hidden-camera footage, official findings and human stories.

Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor, known for reporting how policy, governance and culture shape life inside schools and universities. His work focuses on institutions under scrutiny, including fraud investigations, watchdog interventions, misconduct and oversight. He has covered a fraud inquiry at the University of Greater Manchester, antisemitism at Goldsmiths College, and proposals on free speech and academic freedom involving Israel and Gaza. His schools reporting includes special educational needs, such as Jamie Oliver’s criticism of Essex over dyslexia. Adams has reported for the Guardian for more than two decades and has focused on education since 2013. He follows inquiries, investigations, panels and policy decisions, explaining their legal and political context while showing how they affect students, staff, families and pupils.

Richard Gladstone stands out for turning official statements, inspections and police updates into clear local stories about how decisions and incidents affect everyday life. He writes for the Sussex Express, covering education, crime, development and community features. His education reporting focuses on school performance and leadership through inspections and student outcomes, while his crime work covers charges, police searches and public safety incidents. He also reports on local development projects, community amenities, human-interest features and culture stories. His recent work includes a Hastings school praised by Ofsted, a charge in a rape case, a corrosive substance attack, plans for Hastings Old Town boating lake, filming in Rye and a charity story in Bexhill. Across these pieces, he keeps a direct, fact-led style and centers concrete detail, places and the people involved.

Robbie Meredith is the BBC’s education and arts correspondent in Northern Ireland, with a distinct focus on how policy and institutional decisions affect pupils, students and cultural organisations. He has held the brief since 2015, after working in the BBC’s radio news and current affairs output. He covers schools, exams, pupil support, special educational needs, universities, further education, student finance and education politics. His reporting combines data and research with detailed accounts from families, teachers and young people. He has covered GCSE results, pupils left without school places, cuts to further education places, university choices and tuition fees. He also reports on arts, culture and public debate, including the Kneecap Glastonbury investigation and an academic investigation at Queen’s University Belfast. His work links institutional decisions to daily experience.

Robert Harries is a senior reporter at WalesOnline. He stands out for linking national policy, inspection findings and day-to-day life in Welsh schools. He covers education online from Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion, with a focus on school closures, rescues, curriculum reform, school standards, literacy and numeracy, and local authority support. He explains the new curriculum for Wales in clear terms and tracks how it rolls out year by year. His reporting also covers school leaders, councils and inspectors as they describe pressure in the school estate. Beyond education, he writes news and features on west and south Wales, including quarry blasting after floods, Met Office weather, and a coastal train journey. His work appears in WalesOnline and regional titles including the Carmarthen Journal, the Llanelli Star, the South Wales Evening Post and the Western Mail.

Sally Weale reports on how education shapes opportunity and inequality. She is an education correspondent at the Guardian, covering schools, universities and education policy in news and features. Her beat includes social mobility, elite institutions, earnings, student wellbeing, neurodiversity, teenage reading, degree choices, artificial intelligence and the labour market. She also investigates tutoring, outsourcing and the commercial side of education. Her notable work examines private schools’ links to Olympic success, earnings differences between graduates, support for neurodivergent pupils and low-paid under-18 workers in an outsourced tutoring scheme. She uses research and data from charities, researchers and official bodies, then tests their claims against policy, practice and lived experience. Her reporting is clear, evidence-led and focused on the effects of education on pupils, students, families and workers.

Seher Asaf covers how policy, regulation, funding and technology reshape European higher education, with a focus on academic freedom, institutional risk and innovation. She is a reporter at Times Higher Education, where she joined the masthead in January 2026 after working as a journalist at the BBC and an editor at the South China Morning Post. Her reporting examines university budgets, infrastructure, private investment, tuition fees, research partnerships, digital credentials, fake degrees, AI use in research and graduate employability. She has covered fraud at EIT Manufacturing, budget cuts affecting French science, academic freedom in Hungary and Turkey, threats to Swiss research links, and higher fees for non-EU students in France. She combines news and in-depth features, using interviews with rectors, policymakers, researchers and sector leaders to connect events with wider shifts in governance, funding, collaboration and student experience.

Tara Evans connects education decisions with everyday money, asking who benefits from university and what student debt means over a lifetime. She is an experienced consumer and personal finance journalist and editor with more than 15 years’ experience at major UK news brands. She is Head of Consumer at The Sun, where she leads coverage of household bills, retail trends, banking, economic policy and personal finance. Her work also covers the cost of raising children, consumer rights, pricing and family spending. Earlier roles included work for This is Money, Mail Online, The Telegraph and MoneySavingExpert.com. She reports in plain, practical language, using real experiences, price checks, numbers and investigations to explain who is affected and what they can do. She also leads long-running projects and campaigns aimed at improving how companies and institutions treat customers.

Tempany Grace reports on how education connects with community life for the Helensburgh Advertiser. Her focus is the everyday life of schools and the groups that work with them. She covers programmes, partnerships and activities that change what is available to children and young people. Community sport in schools is a recurring subject, including the impact of the Helensburgh and Lomond karate club in schools. Her reporting follows pupils, staff and families, showing how developments around school gates affect them. She also contributes to sister weekly titles. Her work has been shortlisted for Weekly Journalist of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. She writes focused, community-facing stories that treat education and local life as part of the same picture.

Theo Bosanquet links arts-industry news with the education systems that train future creative professionals, treating institutions and courses as drivers of the wider culture sector. He is news editor at Arts Professional and a journalist and critic with more than 18 years of experience in the arts sector. His beat spans creative higher education, professional training and arts-industry dynamics, with a focus on how organisations, funders and educators shape the working lives of artists and creative workers. He covers creative universities, new degree partnerships and institutional changes as industry stories, emphasising sector impact and routes into creative work. His news editing draws on a long theatre and culture reporting background at outlets including WhatsOnStage, Backstage, TIME magazine, the Guardian, HuffPost, Time Out, London Theatre and The Stage, where he built experience in reviews, interviews, features and industry reporting.

Vaishnavi Shukla is a sub-editor on the news website of Careers360 whose education reporting treats exams, regulators and students as parts of one ecosystem. She now focuses on national entrance and eligibility tests, live exam results and counselling updates, and accountability stories on testing agencies, universities and professional regulators. She covers high-stakes exams across school, university and professional levels, with service-oriented alerts on admit cards, result links, answer keys, cut-offs and counselling timelines. Her reporting tracks regulators and compliance in medical and allied education, documenting actions against “on-paper” teachers, staffing norms and directions from oversight bodies on disability data and recruitment. She centres student voices in coverage of protests, campus decisions and admission controversies, while following exam reform debates and task force recommendations on JEE and NEET to show how policy and governance reshape education.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance education journalist whose defining thread is close, document-based scrutiny of school policy, especially academies, accountability and finance, and how these structures affect pupils, staff and communities. He is writer-editor of Education Uncovered, an investigative news site shining light on schools policymaking and its impacts at ground level. On the schools beat since 1997, he focuses on the mechanics and consequences of successive waves of reform in England’s state system, with specialisms in the accountability system and academies policy. He combines national analysis with case studies, using data analysis, academy trust accounts, official statistics and Freedom of Information requests to test official claims. A large share of his work examines academy trusts’ reserves, executive pay, central charges and topslices, Ofsted inspection decisions, free schools projects, and the legal and governance battles that shape everyday life in individual schools and communities.

Wesley Irvin is a visual-first videographer and news reporter whose concise text is driven by extensive photo and video coverage of education, civic life and community events. He reports for Clarksville Now and Christian County Now, producing school stories that focus on students, families and campus milestones, such as a Kirkwood High student winning a new Toyota Corolla at a Pass and Go event and the first days of the school year. He documents community gatherings including Easter egg hunts with helicopter egg drops, large job fairs, and events at Boyd’s Pumpkin Patch, as well as “then and now” photo comparisons and tornado damage and recovery. His camera-led reporting also underpins civic and political coverage, from mayoral and state legislative candidate forums to police chief transitions, keeping complex issues clear by showing who is involved and what happens on the ground.

Will Mann is a construction industry editor and reporter focused on building safety, competency and how projects perform under regulatory and climate pressure. He edits Construction Management and covers education estates, tracking building safety reform, competency standards and fire and cladding remediation as continuous governance and data-led processes. His work explains how regulation, including the Building Safety Act, translates into responsibilities for dutyholders, principal contractors and principal designers, using certification schemes and quality management systems as case studies. He profiles project managers rebuilding RAAC-affected schools and delivering complex refurbishments, emphasising method, sequence, constraint and stakeholder management. Mann also chairs roundtables on digital tools, carbon reduction, contractor innovation and client regulation, turning multi-voice panels into clear narratives about systems change. His reporting uses detailed project and education-sector case studies to show how policy, safety and climate pressures shape design, phasing and delivery.

Zena Hawley combines specialist education reporting with agenda-setting coverage of city issues and heritage for the Derby Telegraph’s digital operation. She focuses on Ofsted reports, school inspections, governance, safeguarding, classroom practice, inclusion, pastoral care and leadership, translating formal findings into clear accounts for families and staff. Her past work includes sustained reporting on critical findings at local faith schools and a campaign to save hundreds of Alstom jobs, covering skills, training, unions, elected representatives and community impact. She also reports from major incidents, including a bus fire and anti-social behaviour, using site visits, eyewitness detail, official statements and reader accounts. Her heritage features cover Buffalo Bill, Henry Royce, aviation, landmark gigs and Shrovetide football. She produces campaigns, explanatory pieces and live reports, combining documents, interviews, site visits and reader responses.