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
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
The directors said it last week. The EIS said it. The trade unions were very clear: questions were asked, and people did not like them being asked.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Was the impact of the pandemic the only reason for the inconsistency? Were there no other reasons for a different application by different teachers in different schools? Are you sure that it was all to do with the pandemic?
10:00Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
The directors who were before us last week and the Educational Institute of Scotland acknowledged that the historical performance in schools was used in providing feedback. Are you denying that completely?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Hold on a second. Let me conclude. That pressure was not on previously better-performing schools. Why was that appropriate, even in an advisory or feedback loop? Why was that ever allowed to happen? Surely we learned the lessons from the previous year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
You said that historical attainment did not have a role
“from the perspective of the SQA.”
However, it is clear that historical data did have a role in the system. If a question was asked whether a pupil or a class was out of line with previous performance, a question was asked. Even if it did not lead to the SQA changing a result, that put pressure on the teacher, the class or the school to question whether the result was right. That never applied to better-performing schools, where a poorly performing pupil was never questioned, because the school was sticking in with historical performance. Even though you never asked and you never moderated, the system did, and you allowed that to happen. It was your system, so surely you should take responsibility for that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
You have said that your pupils should be proud of their achievement and have full confidence in the results, but I want to know how you know that. In advance of the committee meeting, the SQA submitted a document that says that the results this year cannot be compared with previous years, but it goes on to say that people should have confidence in the system that produced those exact results. I wonder whether there is an inconsistency there. Why have you published those results if people should not draw definitive conclusions from them?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Willie Rennie
You asked teachers and schools to provide evidence of their pupils’ performance. Different teachers approached that in different ways. The approach differed between schools and between subjects for the assessments and qualifications in the past year. You said that that was to allow flexibility to cope with the impact of the pandemic. Particular outbreaks in schools were one impact. Are you sure that that is the only reason why the evidence guidance was applied in different ways in different schools?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Just as a follow-up to that, there was criticism from the EIS but also from some—[Inaudible.] The criticism from the EIS, in particular, was that the SQA was saying that these were assessments but it was reverting to a more traditional model. What is your view on that?
As a final follow-up, there have been some claims that this year and the previous year can teach us a lot about what we are going to do with assessments and exams in future years—is that true or not? You have indicated already that any model in the future would not be like this, so I wonder what we can learn for the future from the past two years.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Willie Rennie
The EIS and pupils have criticised the fact that the assessments were, in effect, exams by another name. The EIS, in particular, was critical of the SQA’s advice in that it was, in effect, reverting to a model of exams but was calling them assessments. What is your view on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Willie Rennie
Thanks for the evidence so far. I want to focus on the stress for pupils and teachers. It is often claimed by pupils that an assessment model is less stressful than a big-hit exam, but we also heard from pupils that the model this time meant repeated assessments, which for some were just as stressful, especially for those who did not get the results in the first assessments that they did and had to do them over and over again. I wonder whether the claim that assessments are generally less stressful than big-hit exams is true, or was what happened peculiar to this year?
