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 1761 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
However, we are interested in the model and how it was applied. That is what members are getting at. It is clear from the data that the gaps increased. How do you account for the increase between the two models—those in 2020 and 2021?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
The consequences of this seem pretty clear. The attainment gap between the richest and the poorest increased. The performance gap between state schools and private schools increased. The gap between disabled students and non-disabled students increased. Do you not feel that those are the consequences of the issue that we have just been discussing?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
You said:
“I welcome the ... announcement of a new specialist agency with responsibility for both curriculum and assessment. This is an opportunity for significant change”.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
I would appreciate that clarity from Beth Black, but I have one question on that answer.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
You talked about a watching brief. I will not ask for the number of days of disruption or anything like that. If schools in one part of the country or one local authority are significantly disrupted and schools in another area are not, could we see different approaches for those different areas? For example, could exams be cancelled in Glasgow but not in Edinburgh? We are talking about a national approach. I see lots of shaking heads. Fiona Robertson talked about exceptional circumstances and taking individual approaches into account. How do you square those two things?
11:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Michael Marra
Thank you for that clarification.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
All of that is useful and, when we consider the design of the 2022 system, those broader impacts must be part of it. It cannot just be about the assessment model; it has to be about the reality of what teachers are facing in the classroom and the circumstances that those young people face.
My final question is about the low number of appeals. Mr Flanagan said that most pupils seem to be satisfied, but I have had representations from a significant number of pupils from across both cohorts—those who got results last year, under the algorithm, and those who got theirs this year, under the alternative certification model—and they are greatly concerned that exceptional circumstances were not accepted in their appeals. So many people faced exceptional circumstances. Should they have been included in the appeals process, and should they be included in the future? I am not too interested in additional information, because I know that provision was made for that to come through in September. That is mentioned in some of the written submissions. I am talking about the exceptional circumstances that were faced.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
Do you think that is happening?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
That was to do with additional evidence and not exceptional circumstances.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
I want to look slightly beyond the qualifications process and immediate assessments to the learning. I was struck by Seamus Searson’s comment about pupils being driven into the ground by assessments and the convener’s remarks about compression being the theme. We understand that there was, in essence, less teaching across the year for a variety of reasons, particularly for some cohorts. There was less time in school, so learning was difficult to access. We have taken evidence from young people in the past couple of weeks, and it is clear that many of them feel that they have not learned as much as others have learned. What challenges will that present as young people progress to the next stages of their qualifications or, indeed, their lives?
