Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Not Addressed
Publish progress measures for 2030 attainment targets, starting with primary pupils, and report annually
Recommendation
The Department has no interim targets to track progress towards the 2030 attainment ambitions set out in the Schools White Paper. The Department has not specified the impact it wants to achieve from its interventions to support education recovery because it regards these as part of its wider efforts to improve pupils’ attainment. In the March 2022 Schools White Paper, the Department set ambitions for pupils’ attainment, by 2030, in literacy and numeracy at the end of primary school and secondary school, but it has not yet set milestones to show progress towards these ambitions. It plans to make public, in the next couple of months, its plans for tracking progress made by primary school pupils. The Department pointed to its Outcome Delivery Plan as the means by which it publishes the performance metrics that measure progress. We note, however, that the most recent Outcome Delivery Plan dates from July 2021, nearly two years ago, meaning that the Department has not provided updated metrics since then. Recommendation 5: The Department should set out measures of progress for the 2030 attainment targets (starting with the measures for primary pupils which it should publish by the 2023 summer parliamentary recess) and report progress against the measures to Parliament each year. Education recovery in schools in England 7 1 Supporting disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils
Government Response Summary
The government response provided addresses a different set of recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee concerning investment, and therefore does not engage with the substance of the recommendation regarding education attainment targets.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
2023. This is the government’s response to the Committee’s report. Relevant reports • NAO report: Supporting Investment into the UK - Session 2022-23 (HC 1080) • PAC report: Supporting Investment into the UK - Session 2022-23 (HC 996) 1. PAC conclusion: The Department for Business and Trade and the Office for Investment are not doing enough to understand the impact of their work to support investment. 1. PAC recommendation: The Department should do further work to understand its impact. This should include surveying investors who decided against investing to establish why not and taking a systematic approach to learning lessons. The Department should also do more to understand why other countries are successful in attracting investment and what it can learn from them. 1.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: June 2024 1.2 In the Department for Business and Trade’s, (previously the Department for International Trade) (the department or DBT) Outcome Delivery Plan for inward investment promotion, the activity is designed to deliver against cross-government strategic ambitions. These include strengthening national wealth, making the United Kingdom a science and technology superpower, accelerating the shift to net zero, and supporting levelling up. Combined with the department’s pursuit of attracting and supporting more higher value investments, the department’s contribution will be in greater employment and stronger gross value add investments. As an example of this, the department’s Official Statistics can be used to identify three key indicators through a levelling up lens: projects landed and associated new jobs created; and investments and new jobs created from Ten Point Plan investments and research and development investments. 1.3 The department will explore the feasibility of expanding on the department’s existing surveying of successful investors the department has supported in a financial year. This will include survey options for investors that abandoned their plans to invest in the UK. The department recognises the learning options contained in this advice. 1.4 The department continues to evaluate the data that is available for analytical purposes relating to the operations and achievements of other investment promotion agencies. Such information is typically kept away from the public domain, but the department will use opportunities through international organisations and other avenues to identify different approaches to investment promotion. 1.5 The department will work to define a suitable timeframe for this in the next 12 months. 2. PAC conclusion: The Department focuses more on securing investment deals in the short term, rather than understanding the long-term economic benefits from investment. 2. PAC recommendation: The Department should review major investments it has supported over the last five years to check the current position on forecast benefits and wider economic impacts and use this to inform futu