• Location: London (SW1P 3BT), Sheffield (S1 2FJ)
• Contract: Permanent
• Salary: £41,446 per annum (London Information Officer Minimum – £45,979)
• Deadline: Sunday 6th September 2026

The Department for Education (DfE) is recruiting for a creative, enthusiastic and politically savvy person to join our media team. 

We are the lead department for the Government’s mission to break the link between young people’s background and their opportunity in life.

Every child and young person should have every opportunity to succeed, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much their parents earn.

We are responsible for:

• Raising school standards through excellent teaching, improving attendance and wellbeing, addressing inequality including SEND provision, and ensuring access to a broad curriculum with enrichment opportunities.
• Increasing young people’s participation in courses that lead to further study and employment, improving further and higher education quality, and providing effective careers guidance.
• Helping create strong family relationships through parenting support and high-quality early education and childcare.
• Reducing emotional and physical harm to children, tackling child poverty, and relieving system pressures to enable children to learn and thrive.

We have a strong culture of inclusion and diversity and are committed to being an equal opportunities employer. We aim to develop all our staff to enable them to make a full contribution to meeting the Department’s objectives, and to fulfil their own potential. We promote and support the use of a range of flexible working patterns to help staff to balance home and work.

​We support this culture though our 11 staff networks, including the BAME, LGBT+ networks to the Carers and EU/EEA Nationals networks.  

Job description

We are recruiting for an exceptional Media Officer to help us tell the public and media about our work to transform early years, schools, colleges, universities and children’s services in an exciting, innovative way. 

You will be at the forefront of driving a campaigning approach to media and communications, using the full breadth of earned media to tell the story of our work to improve children and young people’s lives. 

We have a strong culture of inclusion and diversity and are committed to being an equal opportunities employer.  

You will be joining a busy, high-performing communications team that is highly valued by, and works with, Ministers and senior officials to communicate key public policy and education priorities. 

You will also work closely with the digital content team, campaigns, stakeholder management and wider colleagues in internal and strategic communications to deliver consistent, high-quality content. 

Key responsibilities 

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Create and deliver creative and stretching media and communication handling plans that keep us on the front foot and build the public’s confidence.
• Establish and maintain relationships with key journalists, stakeholders and creators, keeping them across future announcements from the Department and regularly pitching ideas to them to ensure coverage.
• Develop a good understanding of the media and/or policy priorities in your area of work and identify and flag risks and issues identified.  
• Monitor and evaluate media to improve future media handling.
• Use media and audience insight to inform your approach and adapt messaging and narratives based on the audience.  
• Provide advice – and constructive challenge where required – to policy teams, the Permanent Secretary, ministers, and special advisers on the communication implications of new, developing and existing policy.
• Demonstrate excellent written communication skills across both reactive issues handling and proactive media products to ensure appropriate content, messaging, tone and consistency in media communication.
• Work constructively across comms teams including social, digital, stakeholder and strategy and willingness to get involved in multi-media projects.
• Represent the DfE in cross-government meetings, and work with external stakeholders to gain insight, to influence where necessary, to suggest joint initiatives where appropriate and to contribute to the existing or proposed initiatives of others.
• Participate in the out-of-hours duty rota providing an on-call service to members of the media.

Person specificiation

Essential Criteria:

• Substantial experience developing audience-focused, integrated media, social and digital communications plans, advising senior stakeholders on their implementation;  
• Ability to utilise insight and evaluation to plan effective communications strategies with different audiences;  
• Strong written and verbal communications skills; 
• Ability to build and maintain relationships, particularly with journalists, influencers and creators – using your network creatively to consistently land stories over time; 
• Be a self-starter, able to juggle competing priorities and motivate yourself to keep ahead of the news agenda and communications trends, coming up with new ideas and ways to tell the Department’s priority stories; and 
• Substantial experience managing reactive media issues and crises. 
  
  In return, we will ensure that you are fully supported and have the opportunity to develop your career as a skilled communications professional.  

Behaviours

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills
We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:/

• GCS Technical Skill – Insight
• GCS Technical Skill – Implementation
• GCS Technical Skill – Ideas
• GCS Technical Skill – Impact

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,446, Department for Education contributes £12,006 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Applicants currently holding a permanent post in the Civil Service should note that, if successful, their salary on appointment would be determined by the Department’s transfer / promotion policies.

As a member of the DfE, you will be entitled to join the highly competitive Civil Service Pension Scheme, which many experts agree is one of the most generous in the UK.

You will have 25 days leave, increasing by 1 day every year to a maximum of 30 days after five years’ service. In addition, all staff receive the King’s Birthday privilege holiday and 8 days’ bank and public holidays.

We offer flexible working arrangements, such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.

Most DfE employees will be working a hybrid pattern, spending at least 60% of their time in an office or work setting. Changes to these working arrangements are available in exceptional circumstances but must be agreed with the line manager and in line with the requirements of the role. 

Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DfE, but travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.

As an organisation, which exists to support education and lifelong learning, we offer our staff excellent professional development opportunities.

To read the full role description, please click here.

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How to apply

To submit an application for this role (and learn more about the applications process in full), please click the ‘apply now’ button below. The applications process is as follows:

• Stage 1: Civil Service Numerical Test (CSNT)   
• Stage 2: Civil Service Verbal Test (CSVT)   
• Stage 3: Application (at this stage you will provide a short CV and statement of suitability)

Things you need to know:

This vacancy is using the Civil Service Numerical and Verbal tests. The deadline for completing the tests is the same as the vacancy closing date. Please ensure you complete the tests with sufficient time to complete the written application. 

When submitting your application, please specify that you heard about the role through the Taylor Bennett Foundation.