Money spent on promoting awareness to the National Test Programme: EIR release

Information requested

How much money has been spent by the Scottish Government or non-departmental public bodies on promoting awareness and or uptake for the National Test Programme. As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response

To confirm, no money has been spent by The Scottish Government or any non-departmental public bodies to promote awareness. Various methods of awareness raising have taken place online, during conferences, meetings and via social media posts and e-newsletters, however no money was spent on paid marketing, communications or advertising for the National Test Programme.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.