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 873 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
The report says “Most local authorities” and it specifies that that means that, I think, 70 to 90 per cent of local authorities used three to five years of historical data and that local authority officers expected staff to use that to identify and address unexpected grades. That does not fit with the picture that you have given. As the person responsible for the qualifications that are handed out, did you not have a problem with that at the time?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
First, I am talking about the first OECD report, which suggests that the SQA, or an equivalent body, should be merged with the curriculum body. In your experience, do you think that that would be a good move?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
What is your expectation? Do you expect grades to return to normal?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
However, do you think that the initial recommendation—to move the exam assessment part of our system in with the curriculum part—is right?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
Do you not think that, in fairness, learners deserve to know whether their grades are likely to reflect those from previous years or those from the two exceptional years with which you have said that comparisons cannot be made?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
I am not asking about ministers. Given your professional experience as someone who has headed up Scotland’s exam body, if anyone was going to stand up for exams and make the case that what we are doing at the moment is right, it would probably be you. Is there another side to the story that the Parliament should think about? Do you think that those recommendations are right?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
My final question reflects on one of those issues, although I am not enthusiastic about asking it. I absolutely believe that all young people deserve the grades that they have got in the past two years, and people feel positive about seeing young people from more challenging backgrounds do better than they have in the past. I would like to see that continue, but are there unintended consequences of grade inflation? Do you think that we should be mindful of that?
It is not a popular subject to talk about, but does that bring other challenges with regard to what a qualifications body should be doing? That goes back to my previous question about whether—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 29 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
In 2020, you pushed for the algorithmic element to keep grades where they would have been expected to be. Do you think that that is important in the system—
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
While it is understandable that inspections were paused during the pandemic, many schools across Scotland have already gone years without inspection under the Scottish National Party Government. Can the cabinet secretary tell teachers, parents and young people how often a school should be inspected? What is the maximum number of years between inspections that the Government thinks is acceptable?
Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)
General Question Time
Meeting date: 23 September 2021
Oliver Mundell
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the restarting of school inspections. (S6O-00191)
