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 902 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support Needs and Care Experienced Young People (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Willie Rennie
I prefer to be brief, convener.
Mainstreaming is an important area. I am sure that everyone supports the mainstreaming approach, but, as we see in the written evidence, there are consequences for wider learning, for other pupils and for the classroom environment. I am keen to understand more about what that looks like and what we can do to try to address those issues. Perhaps Laurie Black could comment first.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support Needs and Care Experienced Young People (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Willie Rennie
Do teachers feel that they get enough support when such incidents happen, to help them to manage the circumstances?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support Needs and Care Experienced Young People (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Willie Rennie
Would any of the other witnesses like to comment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Willie Rennie
Thank you, Professor Stobart. That has been very helpful.
10:00Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Willie Rennie
Thank you for your refreshingly frank introduction, professor. My questions cover three areas: the staging posts of qualifications; the effect of a leaving qualification on the leaving age, whether from school or education; and motivation.
On staging posts, some pupils like to get qualifications in the bag as they go rather than leaving it all to the very end—the last year—and putting all the stakes on one option. We currently have three years of nat 5s, highers and advanced highers. I know that you are not making a specific recommendation, but the hint is that you want to strip things down. How far would you go? How far would it be reasonable to go? What are the trade-offs around that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Willie Rennie
Currently, unlike some other countries, we allow pupils to leave at 16. I think that, in the past, some of my family left school at 14. The leaving age is now 16; other countries have gone for a leaving age of 18.
If we had a leaving qualification—not necessarily from school, but from education—would we need to raise the leaving age? Would we need further reform around the leaving age?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Willie Rennie
My final question is about motivation. Some teachers and pupils tell us that having the focus of an exam gets them out of a rut and makes them work—it motivates them to achieve. However, I know that every pupil learns in a different way. Will you talk about what we might lose if we were to move towards having more assessments and away from exams at the end of the academic year? What are the issues?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Willie Rennie
That is an interesting point. The vocational offer in schools is often criticised as not being sufficient. The academic route continues to be the predominant priority. Do you think that the vocational offer in schools is good enough, in the event that we went for a leaving qualification and raised the age for leaving education or training?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Willie Rennie
I want to talk about colleges and regionalisation. Do you think that the regionalisation has achieved the objectives that were set out in 2011?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Willie Rennie
I want to touch on universities, which are under—[Inaudible.]—and, in particular, are more reliant on potentially volatile international student numbers, because the world is volatile. The finances in those institutions, which are otherwise amazingly successful, are still unpredictable. That means that there is quite a significant demand on the public sector, although those institutions nevertheless are, and have been, quite independent, which is in large part why they are so successful.
How do you go about doing your job with universities? I noted a little bit of frustration in one of the remarks, about being unable to measure effectively, because it is not so easy to do. How do you strike a balance between those institutions’ independence, and therefore their success, and the need for the public sector to be able to measure and scrutinise what is happening in them?
