  Surveys of star-forming regions reveal that the dust mass of protoplanetary
discs decreases by several orders of magnitude on a timescale of a few million
years. This decrease in the mass budget of solids is likely due to the
gas-drag-induced radial drift of mm-sized solids, called pebbles. However,
quantifying the evolution of this dust component in young stellar clusters is
difficult due to the inherent large spread in stellar masses and formation
times. Therefore, we aim to model the collective evolution of a cluster to
investigate the effectiveness of radial drift in clearing the discs of mm-sized
particles. We use a protoplanetary disc model that numerically solves for disc
formation, and the viscous evolution and photoevaporative clearing of the gas
component, while also including the drift of particles limited in size by
fragmentation. We find that discs are born with dust masses between 50 Earth
masses and 1000 Earth masses, for stars with, respectively, masses between 0.1
solar masses and 1 solar masses. The majority of this initial dust reservoir is
typically lost through drift before photoevaporation opens a gap in the gas
disc for models both with and without strong X-ray-driven mass loss rates. We
conclude that the decrease in time of the mass locked in fragmentation-limited
pebbles is consistent with the evolution of dust masses and ages inferred from
nearby star-forming regions when assuming viscous evolution rates corresponding
to mean gas disc lifetimes between 3 Myr and 8 Myr.
