Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Answer of 31 October 2025 to Question 77988 on Department for Education: Social Media, how much has been spent on influencers in aggregate since 4 July 2024; and on which campaigns and programmes.

Influencer marketing is a credible paid communications channel used in government advertising campaigns to reach target audiences, particularly those that traditional channels find hard to reach. The department works with influencers across a range of activities, including paid partnerships, PR activity and content creation, to support its campaigns

In the 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial years, the department has spent £708,971 on influencer marketing in aggregate across its campaigns and programmes. This comprises £119,300 in 2024/25 and £589,671 in 2025/26. These totals reflect the full costs attributed to influencer activity for each campaign, which may include fees, production and paid-media costs, depending on how each campaign was procured and delivered and held by financial year

This spend covered the following campaigns:

• Skills for Life, which supports people at all career stages, including young people, to make informed choices about gaining skills and qualifications for career progression. It helps create pathways into meaningful employment and supports employers to access a skilled workforce for economic growth.
• Early Years Careers (Do Something Big), which raises awareness of careers in early years and childcare, challenges perceptions and directs prospective candidates to training and job opportunities.
• Best Start in Life, which supports parents and carers to give young children the best start in life by increasing awareness of early childhood development, encouraging positive behaviours, and signposting support from pregnancy through to starting school, including government help with the costs of childcare.
• Get Into Teaching, which supports the recruitment of teachers by inspiring people to consider teaching careers, promoting the benefits of the profession, challenging misconceptions, and directing candidates to the Get Into Teaching service and initial teacher training.
• Further education (FE) teacher recruitment (Train to Teach in FE), which supports the recruitment of FE teachers by encouraging skilled professionals in priority sectors to transition into full or part-time FE teaching, raising awareness of the role and its benefits and directing candidates to further information and vacancies.

All spend in these areas is subject to standard value for money assessments.