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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1025 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The £100 million is part of the settlement for next year, 2023-24, but the Deputy First Minister made it clear that there were late changes to the 2022-23 budget that allowed him to use some of that to assist with the 2023-24 budget.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
There was not just one announcement but a series of announcements of the changes that we had to make. Those are the types of challenges that the Deputy First Minister has understandably made to Cabinet colleagues to see what could be done to initiate savings.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
For next year, the £123 million comes from the education and skills budget.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
But then you have to understand the consequences of that, Mr Kerr.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
With the greatest respect, Mr Kerr, I say to you that for the entirety of the teachers’ pay dispute I have said that, if the money is to be increased, that money will have to come from somewhere else. I genuinely do not know how that is a surprise to you—the balance has to be found within the budget.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
—and that has consequences—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Certainly. I totally appreciate that the work for the budget proposals that come from local authorities goes on for a number of months before anything goes to the councils themselves. I go back to the point that the teacher census comes out at the start of December. That was when we had the information that showed the reduction in teacher numbers. I completely appreciate that councils had been working on it, but the material and information came out in December, which is when we began immediately to take action.
I am conscious of the fact that we have said previously that we would make the announcement on the next stage of the learning estate investment programme. I have been looking at that very carefully, and I hope to make the announcement soon. It would be fair to say that a number of local authorities have come forward with proposals, all of which are of good quality and that fulfil the criteria, so I am giving the matter due and serious consideration. I appreciate that my taking some more time to look at that is difficult for councils, but I hope that they appreciate that it is because I recognise the real significance to them of the decisions that we would take and because of the number of proposals that came in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Letters went from me to COSLA straight after the teacher census, so no, Mr Marra. I think that you are trying to suggest something. The discussions about that started right after the teacher census. I point out that teacher numbers are still at a near record high in Scotland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Budget 2023-24
Meeting date: 22 February 2023
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Teachers are only one part—but an exceptionally important part—of reducing the poverty-related attainment gap. As I said earlier, we have seen an increase of 2,000 teachers on pre-pandemic levels and, as in other countries, the overall attainment levels have been impacted by Covid. However, in large part because of the exceptionally hard work of teachers and support staff, we have seen improvements in the attainment gap, such as the biggest single-year decrease in the attainment gap in primary numeracy and literacy since levels began. We absolutely still have more work to do on that but we have seen recovery in place and, as I said, that would in large part be down to the teachers.
There are a number of ways in which that work can be done; I pointed to some of those earlier. It is not just done by one teacher in front of a class, but involves specialist work by teachers for small groups of pupils and support for those with additional support needs. There are a number of ways that that can be done.
The quality of teaching and learning is also important. It is not possible to say that there is one thing that will improve attainment. There are different aspects to that, but I hope we can agree that teachers are an integral part of that. That is why the Government has placed such importance on increasing teacher numbers and why I have taken decisions to ensure that we do not see decreases in teacher numbers, which should be maintained throughout the year.
