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 1010 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
It is very clear that PEF is additional. The evidence that the committee has received from directors of education, for example, shows very clearly that, in their view, the funding is additional.
10:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Again, I point to the evidence that the committee received from a director of education, who said that priorities might change within a local authority. A local authority might determine, as is absolutely its right, that priorities have changed within its area, and a headteacher could then decide that they wish to keep a service, even if a local authority has changed its priorities. As has been amply demonstrated by that director of education, those things can happen, and that is the reason why.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I think that the OECD reported that, although, over a number of years, we have continued to say that there is room for improvement in Scottish education, we have a good foundation for Scottish indications. I will push back on the point that the OECD is critical of Scottish education, because I do not think that that is a fair reflection—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I think that we are seeing improvements in key areas—or we were, pre-pandemic. We have also seen good progress being made in general. For example, we now have a much more empowered system in which headteachers are much more knowledgeable and able to pick projects that work correctly for the schools; therefore, they feel that they can determine what is driven in their school.
We know that progress was made in some areas. We also know that there is more to do. I would point out again not just that the five-year evaluation report has shown good progress but that we have a record high proportion of school leavers entering positive destinations upon leaving school. While I absolutely accept that there is more to do, when we look at the school leaver destinations and the ACEL statistics that I read out, we see that there is progress, although it needs to be accelerated.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
It is not the case.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Again, I point to the fact that we have seen an uplift in the PEF per pupil that is given to local authorities. We have established that this year.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
An important area of work with local authorities relates to the fact that we allow money to roll on so that local authorities can blend it, but I point to the fact that, even if that—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Let me finish my point. Even if £6 million was not being used in education, a very substantial gap would still be left. There is not £43 million unallocated in my education portfolio. As with all these things, if the member thinks that I should be spending additional money, he should say where it should come from. Should it come from early years education? We removed core curriculum charges; should it come from that budget? Should I reduce the school clothing grant? The money all has to come from somewhere. With the greatest respect, I cannot just find £43 million of additional funding.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
There was a discussion initially about how we could have a fair funding settlement. We then discussed with stakeholders what that fair funding settlement would look like right across Scotland. In the evidence that the committee has heard, one of the education directors—I think that it was the director from Inverclyde Council—said that she would, of course, have preferred to keep all the money, but she recognised that a fair funding settlement was required.
We discussed the impact of that, as the committee would expect, and that is one of the reasons why I made sure that a taper was in place to allow the changes in funding to be made not over one year, but over four.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I will reflect on a conference I was at only last week, at which I was asked by a teacher, in questions and answers, about the importance of taking a whole-child approach and the fact that it is impossible to—nor should we attempt to—look at education just by looking at attainment and not looking at children’s health and wellbeing. That is very important. Indeed, the feedback that I was receiving from teachers last week was about the importance of ensuring that we were look at health and wellbeing and other aspects.
We have more teachers now than we have had at any time since 2008. The ratio of pupils to teachers is at its lowest since 2009. There are more than 2,000 more teachers in Scotland’s schools than there were before the start of the pandemic and, of course, we have made additional commitments for the current parliamentary session. That shows that we are investing in teacher numbers, but it is not contradictory to say that, along with headteachers, parents and teachers, we should also look at how PEF should be spent to support those young people. That is a very clear part of the system.
