The Department for Education has defended its expenditure of more than £700,000 on "influencer marketing" over the past two years. Figures released in response to a parliamentary question last month show the department allocated £119,300 in the 2024/25 financial year and a further £589,671 for 2025/26. This spending has drawn sharp criticism, with the Conservative Party suggesting it highlights significant misjudgements in Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s priorities.
But the DfE said: “Influencer marketing allows us to reach audiences where they are, in a much more cost-effective way than traditional marketing techniques.
“Every penny is focused on making a tangible difference to people’s lives, whether it’s campaigns to recruit the teachers and early years professionals our education system badly needs or making sure that parents know about the childcare and cost of living support available to them.
“More and more people are getting their news and information from social media. We want everyone to hear from government and ensure no one misses out on schemes they are eligible for.”
Examples of campaigns include paid ads with influencers with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers about funded childcare and careers in teaching.
A Government source said: “The Government has always spent money advertising schemes people can benefit from, whether it’s free breakfast clubs in their area or job opportunities in teaching.
“In the past this was done via magazine adverts or billboards, but with changing trends we are shifting more of that funding to social media, where we can reach a lot more people.
“For many people, and especially those who don’t always watch the news, seeing a video from an influencer they follow might be the first time they find out about a new childcare initiative they are eligible for.”
Laura Trott, shadow education secretary, told Tes magazine the spending showed Ms Phillipson’s priorities are “all wrong”.
“She can find hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money for social media influencers, yet she is quietly stripping away opportunities for disadvantaged children,” she said.
“Having quietly axed programmes including the PE Premium, the Latin Excellence Programme and computing initiatives, this Government is pulling up the drawbridge and leaving children with fewer opportunities.”
While Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The DfE is clearly increasingly taken by the idea of influencer marketing but we would seriously question whether this is a sensible use of public money.”
In May, Ms Phillipson was forced to defend the move to feature reality TV star Gemma Collins in a series of DfE social media posts.
The former The Only Way Is Essex star appeared in a string of clips, walking through department offices in one of them demanding to know “what are we doing to help the children?” to music from The Devil Wears Prada.
The department said Collins was not paid for the meeting or for the making of the posts, and the only associated costs related to internal staff time.
Responding to criticism, Ms Phillipson told Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live: “I do have to come back to this point that I think a lot of the comments that I’ve seen on social media and elsewhere… there is a big dose of snobbery here – ‘What’s she got to offer? What does she have to contribute?’ – I do have to question why people are saying that and I do think it is snobby.
“She can reach some of the audiences that we want to reach to make sure that they know what government is trying to do to work with them.”
At the beginning of last month, early education minister Olivia Bailey responded to a written question from Conservative MP Mike Wood about how much had been spent on influencers since July 2024.
She supplied the figures and said they “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”.
The department’s total marketing spend in 2024/25 was £51 million, and it anticipates the figure for 2025/26 will be broadly in line with that sum.
