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
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
That suggests that universities’ ability to create income is the difference that is creating the discrepancy. Is that the case?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Over the past decade, we have gone through a process that has involved mergers and regionalisation. Can you briefly give us your views on the extent to which that process has achieved its aims? What have been the successes and where is there still room for improvement?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Derek Smeall talked about the greater influence that merged colleges have had. With that, has there come parity of esteem with universities? Is it a partnership of equals? Have you found that that aspect has improved?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
I have one final question. Have merger and regionalisation led to a reduction in the duplication of courses, such that the offering is more tailored? In the context of the relationship with employers—particularly small and medium-sized enterprises—is the college offering now better tailored to their needs than it was previously?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
From a statistical point of view, it strikes me that 2019 and 2022 are comparable with regard to assessing performance, which indicates an improvement in closing the attainment gap, albeit not as much of an improvement as we might want.
Fiona Robertson, when you talk about a fair and credible assessment system, how do you explain the fluctuations in the numbers in the period between those two years?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
I know that Robert Quinn wants to come in. It is important that that evaluation is provided, because you should not be left to mark your own homework.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
How many times has the oversight board met in practice? How does it operate? How are external stakeholders inputting into the process?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Perhaps the biggest complexity of all was the impact of Covid-19 on the learning experience of those young people—and, let’s face it, the teaching environment for teachers.
This is perhaps a difficult question to answer, but, given that 2022 is not directly comparable with 2019 regarding the whole experience, when will we get back to a point at which we could reasonably compare a year with 2019 and reasonably measure progress or otherwise? Are we talking about next year or the year after? When might we be able to do that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
The committee has done a piece of work on the attainment gap. Given the vast sums of money that—rightly—have been directed towards tackling the issue, we must have some measure or indication of progress or otherwise. That is essential. Therefore, I repeat my question: are we talking about next year or the year after? When will we be reasonably able to say, “This is the progress that has been made over a four-year period,” or whatever the period happens to be?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you. That is helpful.
