Author: Nola Jones

This type of loss is especially cruel. The tests have been completed. You’ve finished the most challenging part of secondary school. The results slip is still weeks away, you are eighteen, and summer is just around the corner. That window of opportunity and relief was incredibly fleeting for Alisha Dillon, a Leaving Certificate student at Mercy College Coolock in north Dublin. On Sunday, June 21, Alisha unexpectedly passed away at Beaumont Hospital while surrounded by her family. Her age was eighteen. She had just completed her Leaving Cert exams, which hundreds of thousands of Irish students prepare for and dread…

Approaching Saint Eunan’s College for the first time has a subtle yet striking quality. Situated on Sentry Hill in Letterkenny, County Donegal, the structure has four turreted round towers that rise against the Irish sky, giving it a more cathedral-like appearance than a classroom. That similarity is not coincidental. You get the impression that this institution was built to last as you approach the front entrance past a lone monkey puzzle tree on the lawn. The architecture was purposefully modeled after the nearby St. Eunan’s Cathedral. It has. The college was first established as a minor seminary in 1906 by…

Students are familiar with a specific type of Tuesday afternoon. No one wants to cook, classes end by two, and the library feels stuffy. Going out is suggested by someone in the group chat. Immediately, there is the customary discussion about cost. A screenshot of Haidilao’s student discount is then increasingly sent, and the discussion comes to an end. Universities in the UK, Malaysia, Singapore, and other countries are witnessing this scene. Through targeted discount programs that vary by country but share the same basic logic—show a valid student ID, pay noticeably less—Haidilao, the Chinese hotpot chain known as much…

Around three in the afternoon, you’ll notice something as soon as you walk through the gate of any Singaporean primary school. With their backpacks swaying, children were streaming out in small groups and heading in various directions, some in the direction of their parents and others in the direction of buses that would take them to various student care facilities around the island. The after-school hours are a source of quiet anxiety for many working families. Who is keeping an eye on the children? More importantly, does that care go beyond keeping them safe until supper? By attempting to respond…

A school that outlives the civilization that created it has a subtly remarkable quality. Yali High School is located on Laodong Road in Changsha, Hunan Province, as if it has always been there, and in many respects it has. Established in 1906 by a group of Yale graduates who thought that education could transcend national boundaries, the institution has endured for more than a century despite political unrest, wars, and forced name changes. It is still present. That conveys a message. The founders, including Warren Seabury, Edward Hume, and Brownell Gage, were neither colonial administrators nor professional diplomats. After graduating…

Tongtex Secondary High School is located on đ峰¹, a street that most people outside the area are unaware of, and is tucked away in Zhudong Township in Hsinchu County, Taiwan. Situated near a nearby train station, the campus is surrounded by the calm, leisurely atmosphere typical of smaller Taiwanese townships. A local shrine and a sports field are both close by. The physical environment doesn’t exude ambition. Nevertheless, this private senior high school, which was established in 1971 and is known by its motto, 勤懇篤實, which means diligence and sincerity, has been gaining recognition well beyond the boundaries of its…

The fallout from the May 2026 collapse of the NEET UG exam was swift and severe. The National Testing Agency had previously experienced controversy, but nothing quite like this: a paper leak, numerous cancellations, irate parents, and sobbing students. Over the next few weeks, there was something between damage control and a thorough reconsideration of the true nature of a national exam. The re-examination, which took place on June 21, was packed with security measures that, to be honest, don’t resemble anything India has ever seen at a civilian testing event. 95,000 exam rooms are equipped with more than 1.38…

A generosity-based land dispute has an almost poetic quality that is also extremely unsettling. Han Chiang School is located in Penang on 12.5 hectares of land that was neither seized nor purchased at a low cost. A philanthropist who thought education was more valuable than the land itself voluntarily donated it. The same gift is now the focus of a multi-court lawsuit that raises issues of law, legacy, and what it means to respect someone’s original intent decades after they have passed away. The story starts in 1948 when the land was placed under a charitable trust created especially to…

On a March evening in 2025, three teenagers perished at a crossroads in Senawang, Negeri Sembilan. Two of them were never able to get off the road. Four days later, the third died in a hospital bed. At the time, the 17-year-old driver struck their motorcycles by running a red light. He entered a guilty plea last week and was given a three-year sentence to attend Henry Gurney School in Melaka. He is now eighteen and uses a walking stick. That sentence will seem either overly forgiving or oddly foreign to a lot of Malaysians. The Henry Gurney School isn’t…

Every first-year university student is familiar with a certain moment. Sitting between the registrar’s office and a partially loaded webpage, you’re attempting to determine whether you are genuinely enrolled in a class or merely wishing you were. It is confusing in a way that seems superfluous. However, that perplexity was only a part of the experience for years. That is beginning to change, though the change is not as significant as you might think. The goal of My Student Compass and other contemporary student information systems is to centralize the entire enrollment and academic administration process. Eliminate the need to…