Media Officer

Job summary

IMPORTANT - 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.

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

About the role

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

• 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 specification

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.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

To apply for this role, please select 'Apply Now' at the top or bottom of this advert. CV details need to be included in the template within the application form; attached or emailed CVs will not be considered.

Stage 1: Civil Service Numerical Test (CSNT)   

When you have completed your personal information, you will be asked to complete the CSNT. You must achieve the minimum pass mark to progress to the next stage. 

Stage 2: Civil Service Verbal Test (CSVT)   

When you have completed the CSNT, you will be asked to complete the CSVT. You must achieve the minimum pass mark to progress to the next stage. 

It is important you allow enough time to complete the test online (within 24-48 hours is recommended), and obtain the results before you can complete your full application online prior to the test closing date and time.

Do not leave completing the tests until the last minute in case you experience any access or technical issues. There may not be technical support available after business hours.

While the tests should work on most operating systems and modern browsers with a good internet connection, we cannot guarantee that every combination will work. At the beginning, the test will check which browser you are using, and alert you if it is likely to be incompatible.

It is highly recommended that you complete the online tests on a desktop computer, not a mobile phone or tablet.

If you are unsuccessful in passing the online tests you will be unable to continue any further in the application process. If you successfully pass the tests, you will then progress to stage 3 of completing the full application.

Stage 3: Application

At sift stage, you will be assessed on your Experience in line with the essential skills listed in the person specification section of the job advert.

To apply for this role, please provide:

• A Short CV setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role.
• Your Statement of Suitability – In no more than 1000 words, provide examples of how your personal skills, qualities and experience meet the essential criteria. This is not intended to be a cover letter, instead work through each essential criteria in turn. You may wish to follow the STAR technique to help focus your examples. The key things we are looking for are what you did, how you did it and what the outcome was.

To confirm, the maximum word count for the statement of suitability is 1000 words . Please adhere to this limit as anything over 1000 words will not be taken into account.

The CV and Statement of Suitability will be assessed against the essential criteria detailed in the advert.

Should there be a high volume of applicants, candidates will be sifted on the Personal Statement only.

We reserve the right to increase the minimum pass mark for the CSNT and CSVT where there is a high volume of applications or a particularly strong field of candidates. Where this occurs, candidates who do not meet the revised pass mark will not progress further, and their written application will not be assessed.

Please note, CV details must be contained within the template on the application form. Any CV or Statement of Suitability that has been emailed to our team will not be considered.

Application sifting will commence 07 September 2026. Please note these dates are subject to change.

If you are successful at application sift stage, your application will be progressed onto Stage 5 part of the Selection process.

Stage 5: Assessment/Interview

The interview will be a 2-part process:

Part 1: Candidates invited to interview will be asked to complete a brief scenario and written task at the start of their interview. Details of the task will be provided at the start of the interview with an allotted time of one