Cork TD slams €1m spend on school attendance ad campaign

An advertising campaign aimed at improving school attendance has cost more than €1m in the seven months since it was introduced, the Department for Education and Youth has confirmed.

The campaign, entitled ‘Every School Day is a New Day’, was launched late last September by Tusla Education Support Service (TESS) and the Department of Education.

The target audience was parents and guardians of school-going children, with the aim of the raising awareness of the severity of casual non-attendance across all children and encourage greater school attendance.

It was launched as the latest data available showed that one in five children are missing more than 20 days of the school year.

In a reply to a parliamentary question from Thomas Gould, Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central, education minister Hildegarde Naughton said the campaign had cost a total of €1.1m

TWO PHASES

The campaign costs were broken into two phases, with the first phase costing €560,000 and the second phase costing €542,000.

Phase one consisted of the creation of adverts, and associated production and distribution costs amounting to over €204,000, and the purchase of advertising space across all media costing just over €356,000.

Phase two covered the creation of radio advertisements, and associated production and distribution costs, costing €51,849 and the purchase of advertising space across all media costing just under €491,000.

Mr Gould told The Echo that while there was no question that children’s school attendance needed to improve, all evidence showed that increasing supports from an early age had the most impact on children.

“In a year when the government tried to cut SNA provision to children, it is shocking that they would spend over €1m on a campaign on school attendance,” he said.

“If you have a child in a mental health crisis, a billboard won’t get them into schools. Investment in CAMHS and in-school supports is the solution.

“We want to see all children supported to attend school. We want to see parents supported to bring their children to school. But that needs a holistic approach not ads on billboards. I have parents contacting me whose children have no school place for next September, this ad is pure insulting to them.” 

A spokesperson for the Department of Education and Youth said tackling the school attendance issue was a key priority for Ms Naughton.