Francis Beckett: 'We are losing education journalism just when we need it most'

Journalist and author Francis Beckett has written a hard hitting blog on the state of education journalism.

Beckett says he understand the Independent will stop publishing its Thursday education pages after this week.

He claims: "Education - real education, that is, not training in the skills required for work - is in greater danger than it's been in my lifetime. Education journalists, who a decade ago would have been sounding the alarm, don't have access to their platforms any more.

"At the Independent, until now, two long-serving and much respected education writers, Lucy Hodges and Richard Garner, were allowed to continue to practise their trade.

"The TES and Times Higher Education are a shadow of what they once were. The freelance market is littered with good journalists who know education and care about it, and once wrote for these two publications. Now they make their living doing public relations for official education bodies, and their independent voice is silenced. The Tuesday Education Guardian, once the place for education debate, has become a diminished scarp of advertorial."