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 852 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
How many times has the oversight board met in practice? How does it operate? How are external stakeholders inputting into the process?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Perhaps the biggest complexity of all was the impact of Covid-19 on the learning experience of those young people—and, let’s face it, the teaching environment for teachers.
This is perhaps a difficult question to answer, but, given that 2022 is not directly comparable with 2019 regarding the whole experience, when will we get back to a point at which we could reasonably compare a year with 2019 and reasonably measure progress or otherwise? Are we talking about next year or the year after? When might we be able to do that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
The committee has done a piece of work on the attainment gap. Given the vast sums of money that—rightly—have been directed towards tackling the issue, we must have some measure or indication of progress or otherwise. That is essential. Therefore, I repeat my question: are we talking about next year or the year after? When will we be reasonably able to say, “This is the progress that has been made over a four-year period,” or whatever the period happens to be?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you. That is helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
My question touches on to something that I want to ask about later on.
We are not just talking about the next year or two. We have a cohort of young people on whom there will be an impact from the pandemic; there will be a legacy impact for years to come. It is important that we—I hate to use this phrase—learn the lessons of the past three years. We surely need to do that in order to adapt our approach to assessment so that there is a level playing field for those young people.
You said there that you were feeding into Louise Hayward’s work. What are you feeding in? What are the lessons that we have learned from the past three years? What have we learned that we could be doing better in our approaches to certification and about the impact of the distribution of grades on all young people’s learner journeys? You talked earlier about modification arrangements being in place and alternative evidencing. What can you take away from the past three years that you think should be embedded in the approach?
11:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Will you give us a sneak preview of the evaluation that you are about to publish? [Laughter.]
What have you been told about the approach that was taken?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
The committee will look forward to seeing that evaluation work.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Will all of that be fed into the review?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
It is about not only how it is done but the appearance of how it is done. Mr Marra made the point that, at face value, having the SQA so dominant in the process could be questioned by those who fear a rebranding and nothing more. What real assurance can be given that this is a genuine process that will get us to where it is clear we need to be in relation to not only forming a new body but the ethos of that body? It is perfectly legitimate for the SQA’s input over the past few years and in a broader sense to be taken on board, but we should also be looking at the issue afresh. How is the oversight organisation that you are running, Mr Baxter, actually operating in practice?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Are we operating in a way that involves looking to the end destination—what it is that we want to achieve—and working out how we best get there, as opposed to simply tweaking the existing practice and approach?
