Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of Early Years Grants.

The Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) is made up of the schools block, the central school services block, the high needs block, and the early years block. It is payable to Local Authorities under Section 14 of the Education Act 2002, and must be used in support of the schools budget as defined in the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations for the relevant year.

At the end of the financial year, the Chief Finance Officer of each Local Authority is required to append a note to its statement of accounts confirming the deployment of the DSG in support of the schools budget as required by the Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2015, available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/234/contents/made.

The Secretary of State reserves the right to recover the grant where there is evidence that a Local Authority has used it for any purpose other than to support the schools budget, or has failed to comply with any other condition of grant.

No specific assessment of the effectiveness of the DSG has been commissioned or is planned, since the funding delivered through this grant provides for the core, day-to-day running costs of schools and early years providers in England.