Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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291. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the frequency and duration of the publicity, marketing or advertising campaigns conducted by her Department to date in 2024; the purpose of these campaigns; the cost of these campaigns; and the agencies that conducted these campaigns, in tabular form. [41176/24]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Overview of communication campaigns in the Department of Education

The Department of Education plans and implements public information campaigns which target segments of the wider school community in Ireland, which comprises children and young people who attend primary, post-primary and special schools; their parents and guardians; school teachers, principals and other staff; young people (and older people) who may be considering teaching as a profession; relevant education organisations and bodies of the Irish State, and the Irish media, traditional and digital.

Most of the planning, implementation and evaluation of the department’s communications and public information campaigns is done in-house by our Communications Unit, whose members have a range of skills and experience. We do, however, outsource the media purchasing and some creative aspects of our two largest campaigns – School Transport and Teaching Transforms, to maximise their reach. This is to ensure that have the best possible chance to communicate their message to the target audiences involved. For example, our School Transport campaign is aimed at parents or guardians of school-age children who are eligible for bus tickets. We sometimes outsource some aspects of other information campaigns when we feel that the use of a media planning and purchasing organisation would help us to reach a wider audience than we could alone.

The department’s communications team manages all aspects of smaller communications campaigns entirely in-house. A recent example of this is our Leaving Certificate Helpline campaign which ran for two weeks over the period that the Leaving Cert. results were announced. Our team worked with other sections in the department in addition to meeting with representatives from the Irish Second-level Students’ Union among others to create messaging and film short video segments for use on social media channels, to communicate both the helpline number and messaging about how it could help parents and guardians, as well as students, who may have been anxious or confused after the results came out.

Other work managed by the communications team include communications from the department to primary and post-primary school; communications on new curriculum, professional development and resources; announcements and events; desktop publishing and design for department publications; video and online content for the department website, social media and digital channels; press office/ media queries; and stakeholder consultations and engagement.

Please see document attached for the list of campaigns in tabular form.