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 2809 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Thank you, Bob. Kaukab Stewart has a final question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Absolutely.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
It must have been difficult to maintain any kind of meaningful communication with the young people during that time. Teachers were struggling as well. How did you cope?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
There has been a lot of criticism of the SQA. The evidence that we have received—including even today—shows lots of criticism regarding communications, decision making and the timing of decisions. Given the circumstances that the country found itself in during the past 18 months, are those criticisms fair?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
We can all be wise after the event—that is the reality. Tony, do you have anything to say on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
We are now out of time.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
It is a very different pathway in normal times.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
We have a number of questions about the communications dimension, which we really want to understand more about.
Audrey, do you want to come in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Did you catch the whole question?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
We are going to have evidence later from the NASUWT—I have to get these acronyms right. It talks a lot about the “compression” that you have been describing in terms of assessment, how difficult it was—“impossible”, it says—for teachers to complete all the work that they were asked to do, including the quality assurance and certification, and about the effect that that had on the teachers. I am sure that you are conscious of that.
