Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 17
13th Report - Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children
Published 7 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Department told us that its childcare policy aimed to support child development and school readiness, alongside enabling parents to work, with supporting parents at home an important element.51 ‘Family hubs’, funded jointly with the Department for Health and Social Care, will be targeted in disadvantaged areas and aim to support parents.52 The Department stressed that family hubs are a relatively new initiative, but described seeing some early evidence of their impact. For example, Doncaster has seen a 1.06 times improvement in children reaching the early years foundation stage profile by age five.53 However, the Department could not yet say whether family hubs were as effective as Sure Start in supporting children from disadvantaged backgrounds, in part as the impacts on GCSE attainment from Sure Start have taken some time to crystallise, with the best evidence only emerging recently.54 The Department said it had, however used evidence from Sure Start to design the family hubs programme, for example in choosing to focus the hubs in disadvantaged areas.55 The Department noted there was a lot of enthusiasm for family hubs and expanding them would be an area for Ministers to consider.56 49 Qq 27, 47 50 Q 47 51 Q 47 52 Qq 34, 47 53 Q 50 54 Qq 48, 50 55 Q 48 56 Q 49 13 2 Understanding spending and the support needed across providers Understanding how funds are spent
From: Public Accounts Committee, 13th Report - Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children (HC 365), 7 March 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirteenth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirteenth report from Session 2024-25
Published 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government disagrees with the Committee's recommendation on setting out gap-narrowing targets and agrees with its recommendations on funding evidence, early years evidence, school spending data, support for evidence-based decisions and the Opportunity Mission.
- On setting three, five and ten year gap-narrowing goals, the government disagrees, stating that "Impact will be measured through attainment at the end of secondary school" and that progress is "already closely monitored" through published data.
- It agrees to re-assess the evidence for funding decisions, with a target date of September 2025. A review of the schools national funding formula "will inform decisions on the NFF and pupil premium for 2026-27" onwards.
- On school spending data, it agrees (target December 2027) and is "reviewing options" to improve pupil premium reporting, including "potential digital solutions by Academic Year 2027-28".
- On early years evidence, it agrees (target April 2026) and says it will work with the Education Endowment Foundation to monitor the impact of the Early Years Pupil Premium uplift through an independent evaluation.