The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
There are two types of keyword search:
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 2155 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
That is a little bit extreme.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
Good.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
Fair enough.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
That is not how the teachers feel.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
Consequences?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 14 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
A whole bunch of stuff was raised in the opening comments, so it is tempting to go in 100 different directions to follow up the things that have been said. There are things that are easy to agree with because they are lovely principles, and then there is the reality. Here, we have the meeting of two things—nice words and lovely ideas, and then the reality of what many teachers are telling us is their daily experience in some of Scotland’s schools and classrooms.
I think that Carrie Lindsay hit the nail on the head. We do not actually know exactly what is happening in our classrooms, because there is such variation in reporting. We need at least to agree that there needs to be a common standard across Scotland for situations that arise in classrooms or schools to end up being reportable. At the moment, we are reduced to using anecdotal evidence in a lot of these discussions. I have certainly been told by quite a few teachers that they are positively discouraged from reporting some of the things that happen in their classrooms. They are told not to make a fuss about them even though, in some cases, people have been off work or even hospitalised.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
I have not asked my question yet.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
Are you saying that, in the scenario that I suggested, that individual, who has an address in Scotland and has been here for a few months, would not qualify?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
I completely agree with Willie Rennie. The minister gave categorical assurances, but we will have to monitor the situation as it develops, because there are issues that might come back to us in due course.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 7 June 2023
Stephen Kerr
You said that you are “confident just now”. I know that that is probably legal speak for not setting anything in concrete.
I have concerns about how this will be interpreted because of the terminology of “ordinarily resident”. For example, the Scottish Parliament information centre’s briefing for today’s meeting says:
“The Scottish Government expects someone who is ordinarily resident in Scotland to have made their home in Scotland with the intention of staying and living here”.
I feel that that is a huge open barn door. How will we test expectations and intentions? For example, someone could move here at Easter, do a job through spring and into summer—a summer job, basically—apply to go to a Scottish university, have an address in Scotland, be able to produce the necessary documentation to prove that they are resident there and then make an application. That is correct, is it not?