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 708 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
Everyone talks about parity of esteem, but we need to actually deliver that, which will require a cultural change. It will require us to help parents, who are major influencers of young people when they come to make choices, to recognise that an apprenticeship represents no less of a future than a university qualification—which is not to take anything away from university qualifications.
We really need to ban the word “vocational”. We talk about vocational qualifications, but why do we differentiate between the academic and the vocational? As soon as we do that, people ask whether “vocational” means “lesser” or what it means. It is a simple thing, but we must watch our language. We spoke about the language earlier. Going to college and training to be a joiner or a plumber is no less positive a destination than going to university. We must all watch our language if we are to change people’s views on the career openings for our young people.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
Lesley, do you want to start?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
That has not happened yet. We have invited the principals groups of the colleges and universities to put forward names of appropriate individuals—who is appropriate might change according to what we are exploring—so that the practitioner’s voice is heard loud and clear in the room, for the cabinet secretary’s benefit. I cannot say who will be involved—it will be up to those groups to decide who to put forward. It is incredibly important to have that representation of principals’ thoughts and ideas, which will help to drive the work in the right way.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
I talked earlier about taking the time to avoid unintended consequences, and that is one that has been flagged to us. We are not as convinced as the universities are that that is a legitimate concern in reality, but we respect the view that they have expressed and we will, of course, take the issue on board, because it would be counterproductive if we were to do something like that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
Do you mean for apprenticeships?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
I will give a general answer and then bring in Jane Duffy, because she is sighted on that.
I would be surprised if our universities were blockers to anything. The university principals with whom I engage are very open to developing their offering, notwithstanding the fact that it needs to be financially viable for them to do so. If there is not a critical mass of students, it becomes difficult to put together a course and deliver it in a cost-effective way. In a general sense, I find universities very open. The earn-as-you-learn approach is being used by a number of universities, and the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian University are very much developing that graduate apprenticeship approach.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
Okay. I will bring in Jane Duffy, because she has been working on that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
It will not surprise you that I come back to you and ask, “From where?” That is the issue that we have. If the argument is that colleges or any other element of the landscape would require some sort of initial pump-priming support to make the changes that need to be made, it has to come from somewhere. That is the immediate issue—the budget circumstances that we find ourselves in as a result of the public finances.
However, James Withers is also very clear in his report that there is no shortage of money in the system. One of the things that I am looking at—it is not the main driver—is where we can free up moneys in the system to redeploy to areas that we need to support, if those become the areas of focus. If you are away to press me on that and ask me to give you specifics, I cannot do that right now, but we are looking at that. For example, where is there duplication that can be avoided? If that can free up moneys, what would that free up? That is part of our thinking at the moment. I cannot say that that will happen overnight, because it will not, but it is a driver for us at the moment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
One way or another, I expect us to take forward pretty much everything that is in the Withers review. We are still considering the merits of a number of smaller things but, overwhelmingly, we understand—as you can tell from the reaction of the elements of the sector to the review—that what he calls for is right. We are proceeding on the basis that we are looking to deliver that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Post-school Education and Skills Reform
Meeting date: 10 January 2024
Graeme Dey
I am trying to be as helpful as possible.
As you know, we have embarked on a pilot project, which was open to bids. Those that bid were overwhelmingly successful. There are around 21 projects, all of which will be undertaken by universities. We extended the initial deadline to facilitate more applications.
Those projects are due to proceed over the next three months, after which they will be assessed, with a view to providing the programme in the next financial year. I am grateful to all who helped to shape the approach that has been taken.
It would be fair to say that, if there was any criticism, it would be that the timescale is pretty tight, which contributed to the level of applications that were made. However, I think that that has happened in respect of other matters as well.
The plan is to deliver those projects and assess the outcome, with a view to what we do as we go forward, bearing in mind that we want to deliver something that is complementary and supplementary to, not a replication of, the Turing scheme. I am grateful in particular to the universities that helped to progress the programme.
