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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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Scott Mulholland wants to respond to your point, too, Bill.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Thank you for your patience, Stephanie—my apologies for the wait. Oh—Scott Mulholland wants to come in on that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
As someone who uses SEEMIS, are you confident that the system is updated once short-term needs are finished?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Fran Foreman, you wanted to answer the previous question, so do you want to come in first?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Yes, one six.
Laura Caven is indicating that she wants to come in on your original question, too.
I am struggling to recall how to manage a hybrid meeting.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Thank you for that statement. We will move to members’ questions. I have the privilege of asking the first question.
You spoke about the legislative framework, barriers to learning and how things are not a quick fix. You are here very much to talk about the progress on the actions that you laid out. Has the additional support for learning project board considered whether any legislative change is required to support improvement with additional support needs?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Good morning, and welcome to the 21st meeting in 2023 of the Education, Children and Young People Committee.
The committee has agreed to undertake an inquiry into additional support needs, and it is keen to identify where our work can add most value. To that end, we are seeking to understand the progress that has been made since Angela Morgan published her review of additional support for learning implementation in June 2020. The first item on our agenda is therefore a scoping session to help to inform our inquiry into additional support needs—or ASN, which is the acronym that we will use regularly throughout this session.
We will hear from members and the co-chairs of the additional support for learning project board, whose role is to support additional support for learning and inclusion policy, including through delivery of the additional support for learning—or ASL—action plan and associated workstreams. I will try not to use too many acronyms today, but we know that things can be like that.
I welcome our panel of witnesses: Laura Caven, chief officer, children and young people team and co-chair of the additional support for learning project board, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, or COSLA; Laura Meikle, head of support and wellbeing unit and co-chair of the additional support for learning project board, Scottish Government; Fran Foreman, project board member and senior education officer, inclusion and ASN, and inclusion, wellbeing and equalities, Education Scotland; and Scott Mulholland, chair of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland children and young people’s ASN network, project board member and assistant director of education, South Ayrshire Council. I thank you all for joining us.
I invite Laura Meikle to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
It was an early start for all of us.
I say to Laura Caven, who is joining us online, that I can see her directly in front of me, so she can put up her hand if she wants to come in on anything. She can also mention that on BlueJeans, and the clerk will let me know.
We move to questions from Ruth Maguire.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
Laura Caven, who is joining us online, wants to comment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 28 June 2023
Sue Webber
I have a queue of members who are waiting to ask supplementary questions. If your supplementary is asked by another member, please indicate that. We will go first to Stephen Kerr.
