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 1714 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Michael Marra
I am sorry, but it is a bit of a yes or no question. Did you raise concerns about the impact? We have heard a lot about the great work that you have done with headteachers and other people. Did you or did you not raise concerns?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Michael Marra
But it is not the best way for those kids. I know that it is not your decision alone—it sits on the desks of the cabinet secretary and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and conversations happen there, too—and I am not saying that you guys are to blame, but I would have thought that, given the work that you have done over the years, you would have recognised all this. However, what I am hearing is: no, you did not raise any concerns.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Michael Marra
Of course.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Michael Marra
That pertains to a very small area.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
I want to pick up on the line of questioning that the convener started, about the change to the formula. Prior to the pandemic, we had what we were told was very limited progress against the Government’s targets on closing the attainment gap—those are Audit Scotland’s words.
We know that, following the pandemic, the gap in attainment between the richest and the poorest groups is the largest that it has ever been, and that it has grown significantly. We all recognise the impact of the pandemic on that gap, given its impact on our most deprived communities. Therefore, I find it a little bit surprising to hear our witness from Inverclyde Council talking about the council’s exit strategy. Surely the exit strategy should be to ensure that those kids have better attainment, rather than to ask ourselves how we stop spending money on it? I want to explore the rationale of that a little bit.
According to the committee’s papers, the reduction in Inverclyde is 47 per cent and the local authority area is consistently among the most deprived communities in Scotland. At the other end of the table is our witness from East Renfrewshire, which is consistently one of the most affluent local authority areas in Scotland, and its funding is up by 43 per cent.
We all recognise that what we might call hidden poverty exists in every community and that such figures mask numbers. By making this change, are we are moving away from using the rationale of severe multiple deprivation in communities and towards something more general? To me, that has been a founding principle of how we have dealt with poverty in Scotland over a generation—or, at the very least, how we have talked about poverty, as dealing with it is a different matter. Has that rationale changed? I ask Ruth Binks to start.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
I am not sure that that answers my question about young people now—those who have left school.
I have one more specific question before I turn to Mark Ratter. Will you use PEF money to make up for cuts to SAC funding?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
My question is at a slight tangent to the points about headship, but it is relevant to how the attainment challenge work is governed and run. We have talked about numbers, but data that was recently published in Tes magazine showed a significant decline in the number of deputes and others who actually want to become headteachers. You have talked about the work that is done with headteachers. Why are people less attracted to that job than they were previously?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
Does the decline in the number of people aspiring to headship suggest that pressures have grown in recent years? Is that something that you recognise?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
I am conscious that we have received some evidence—through the Ken Muir report on initial teacher education and discussions around it—that some forms were put in place almost a generation ago and have been replicated elsewhere, but we have not kept them up to date. I know that we have a full work programme for the next year at least, but, perhaps later in the session, after we have been through the legislative process, the subjects that are dealt with in the petition might be addressed in a future inquiry. That is not on the immediate horizon, but I am sure that it would come up if there was another discussion about initial teacher education. The committee might want to have that discussion at some point, and I certainly think that there would be grounds for doing so.
11:45Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Michael Marra
[Inaudible.]—the cuts from SAC?
