Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
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.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
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.
Search by MSP
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.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
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.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
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:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
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.
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Displaying 858 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that school spending per pupil is higher in Scotland than it is elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Spending is also 15.6 per cent higher in real terms than it was in 2014-15, so we have supported education—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
If you would let me—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The important areas that we are looking at are the measures in the national improvement framework. We are consulting on those measures to ensure that the right data is being collected and that we are collecting material that is useful to Government and to teachers.
For example, the stretch aims that are coming out from local government will look at the core areas of numeracy and literacy, but it is a core plus model, which means that local authorities are also asked to look at the wider areas around health and wellbeing so that we can determine the impact not just on attainment but on other parts of children and young people’s progress. I will bring in Graeme Logan to talk about the dashboard that is published and the information in that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
It is one of the best ways of closing the attainment gap. Tackling poverty is the other aspect that is recognised in our refreshed mission. Yes, it is about teaching and learning, but we have adapted the mission to recognise the overall impact of societal poverty.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes. Teaching is an integral part of that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
A publication was produced by Education Scotland at around the same time as we launched the refresh. Forgive me—I cannot remember the name of the publication, but the point of it was to look at lessons learned, good practice and so on. Obviously, that happens in Education Scotland, and the national hub also looks at and discusses good practice.
You mentioned the west of Scotland. Every local authority is covered by a RIC, and they are important places for collaboration as well. The RICs are perhaps a part of the system that does not get much discussion. It is perhaps understandable that national Government, its agencies and local government get more attention, but the RICs form an important part of the information sharing and collaborative working. That was absolutely the intent when the RICs were established.
As well as the work that I have mentioned by Education Scotland, we have the 32 attainment advisers—one for each local authority—who are there to advise. They are aware of what is happening right across Scotland and they can relate that. There are also events that go on.
I refer back to the point that I made about the support that Education Scotland can provide to every local authority and indeed directly to schools. It can take the knowledge that has been gathered and disseminate it to headteachers.
It has been good to hear headteachers say—I hope that this is, in part, because of the work of the RICs and Education Scotland—that they feel confident and that they are in a place to be able to implement policies using PEF that they feel will make a difference. They are aware of the policies and they feel confident that they can take them forward. I think that I mentioned that in my introductory remarks, so I will not go through the specific stats on that.
The final part of the collaborative work that is being done is the work by Education Scotland and different local authorities on collaborative improvement. A number of local authorities have been through that process, and every local authority will go through it. The work is being done in close conjunction with the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland to make sure that there is continuous improvement in learning.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
One of the areas that we are very keen to look at in the refreshed challenge is the wider impact of poverty. However, on teaching and learning, one of the key lessons that we learned from the first iteration of this funding, and which we very much hold dear, is the importance of the PEF going directly to schools and having an empowered system so that schools can determine how the £520 million in this refreshed package will be felt. Teachers and their role have a very important place in the system.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
From your questioning, I can see that you are aware that the decision has been taken to stick with the free school meals measurement for PEF. One of the reasons I was keen to see that—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
As do I, convener.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes. I should be clear that we do not want to stop local variation in how schools develop policies and tackle the attainment gap. At the end of the day, we are concerned about variation in outcomes. We are certainly not looking at a one-size-fits-all approach. Education Scotland is doing a great deal of work to provide universal support to all local authorities in Scotland, and it can give more targeted support to the local authorities that are most in need. It might do that by looking at the highest levels of poverty in an area or through dialogue with a local authority when it or Education Scotland has identified that more targeted support is needed. Intensive support can also be provided when we see limited progress.
It is key that Education Scotland is there for every local authority. It will support and work collaboratively with schools and local authorities, and it will challenge, when necessary, if we do not see the progress that we might have expected though the work.
