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 502 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I want to ask about rurality and poverty. Have those who are living and learning in rural communities been well served during the pandemic? There have been lots of cases of people struggling to access digital learning. In the relatively urban areas of my constituency, people worked together and there was lots of community support. However, lots of people living in very remote communities struggled to access such support. Is that something that you have picked up on?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
Thank you. That is helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I want to go back to Willie Rennie’s first line of questioning. I listened to Jim Wallace from Aberlour on the radio the other morning. I do not want to misquote him but, in effect, he said that there should be more of a role for the third sector. I am enthusiastic about having more teachers and support staff in schools, but the question is whether money that is designated for tackling poverty should be used just to bring in more teachers. Given the accountability structures, local authorities have quite a big say in how that money is spent and, in some cases, they are directing headteachers. Is that the right approach? Are we accessing the right expertise? Is there really partnership working, or could the money be distributed differently?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
That would be helpful.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
My question is really whether we are getting the priority right. It is about whether a lot of the money that is going to schools for equity is ending up being used to plug staffing shortages or for other things that are very education focused. I recognise that there is a gap there, but I wonder whether involving the third sector and others who have better expertise in addressing poverty would give us the full chance to use the money as best we can.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I asked that question because, yesterday, we saw a shift in focus away from using the Scottish index of multiple deprivation and towards looking at low-income families. I have been lobbying the Government on the issue for a long time and asking what is being done about hidden rural poverty. However, at no point did I think that that support would come at the expense of our most deprived communities.
A concentration of poverty presents certain challenges, and, as you have identified, people in rural poverty face social isolation and very different challenges. Both challenges must be met. Do you think that looking at low-income families is the right measure for determining how funding is allocated, or do you think that we still need the Scottish index of multiple deprivation? I have always thought that a hybrid system would meet both challenges.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I will push you a little bit on that. Do you think that it is wrong to move away from the Scottish index of multiple deprivation when it comes to allocating the attainment funding? Is that a mistake?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Children and Young People and Deprivation (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 24 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
Is the better model.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I would argue that a change to the system does not really change the prospects for those young people.
Why did the OECD approach you to write the review? My concern is that it asked you to conduct the review because it already knew your long-held and well-known views on the diminishing importance and validity of examinations, which are well explored in your work. Does that not create a risk of groupthink, whereby outside experts come in and tell us that curriculum for excellence is a world-leading, groundbreaking move, despite the fact that people living and learning in Scotland continue to see our once-world-leading education system being dismantled and slipping backwards?
You talk about culture, but would it not be better to work with Scottish culture to recognise the importance of Scottish educational traditions and seek to improve the examination offer, rather than going for more radical reform that might not command the trust and confidence of parents, teachers, young people and employers?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I am mindful that, during the evidence-taking session with the OECD, I was accused of being rude in my questioning. I hope, therefore, that Professor Stobart will see that I am not being rude—I asked the OECD similarly robust questions.
Leading Scottish educationalist Professor Lindsay Paterson has stated that your review is “awful”,
“ignorant of Scottish educational history”
and
“ignorant of current Scottish practice, failing to see that Highers remain the main entry requirement for university, not Advanced Highers.”
He said:
“It is not based on any systematic comparison with non-UK countries, but rather with an arbitrarily chosen group of places that seem to have been selected to make the case against exams.”
Furthermore, he notes that you fail to
“discuss the unfairness of non-exam assessment, for example the unavoidable advantage enjoyed by children from affluent homes with well-educated parents.”
How do you respond to those concerns?
