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 899 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
Ruth said exactly what I was going to say—thank you for that, Ruth. I have no issue with doing what is proposed, but I am mindful of the impact on our work programme and what we would give up in order to do the petition justice—and it deserves justice.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
I agree with what both of you have said. However, we have been taking evidence about Covid, and it is important to put across the view from inside the profession that additional support needs is a very specific term that covers those who are not yet diagnosed, as well as those who have been diagnosed and who experience difficulties with and barriers to learning. It is true that additional needs have come up time and time again, but the needs that have come up are those of young children suffering because of Covid. Those needs and additional support needs are two different things—we must remember that. Although I do not disagree with what you have said, I want to correct the idea that is in your heads. You must not conflate those two things.
Experts are starting to note that, sometimes, when parents say that they think their child is autistic and they want them assessed, the early years practitioner says that, actually, in their professional opinion, the child is not hitting the markers for that and, instead, they have suffered from a lack of stimulus and need a bit of speech and language therapy. I hope that that gives an example of the difference.
The petition concerns additional support needs as per the tight parameters of the legislation.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
That is really welcome—thank you for letting us know about it. Does anybody else want to come in on that?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
Thank you.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
I have been fascinated and hooked by everything that has been said. A lot of it resonates with the evidence that I took from headteachers from the West Partnership a couple of weeks ago, so I will come on to that.
I will talk a little bit about collective agency, which is part of that renewed mission. Sometimes, schools have felt a bit isolated over decades. Having worked in the field for many years, I am glad that schools are being recognised as part of the picture in addressing the poverty challenge and that there is recognition of the need for a multi-agency approach. That is fantastic to see.
Regarding that collective agency between the Government, which sets policies, local authorities, which implement those policies, and third sector organisations and community partners, will the witnesses give me a flavour of success stories from their local authorities and what has not gone so well? What challenges have they faced working with partner agencies?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
That makes me think that, although there might be consistency within a local authority or within learning clusters, the challenge is the variation across Scotland’s 32 local authorities. The dilemma that I am grappling with is that we might have collective agency and the empowerment agenda, but how do we ensure consistency across the whole of Scotland?
I invite anyone to chip in on that, once Tony McDaid has dealt with my previous question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
I thought that I would throw in that second question, which just occurred to me, before I forgot.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Petitions
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Kaukab Stewart
I have no difficulty with picking up from where the previous committee was, because it was going to consider the issue. Its next step was going to be to consider the matter as part of its pre-budget scrutiny. I do not have an issue with that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Kaukab Stewart
Headteachers get promoted because they are teachers and because of their skills in being expert leaders of learning, but then they have to become financial wizards in making best use of funds and being accountable for sometimes vast amounts of money. That scrutiny and responsibility have to be supported. I suppose that what I am asking is whether they are getting enough support in that respect and whether that is the best use of their time.
You talked about additional support for teachers who are pressed for time. What would that support look like?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Kaukab Stewart
My next question, which is in a similar vein, is for Andrea Bradley and Mike Corbett. Having worked extensively in schools, I know that we will want to ensure that money is used for additional staffing, because those staff will be in front of the children, and that contact between experts and children will help the children directly. However, I have seen evidence of additional funding being used to increase the number of principal teachers. I therefore want to drill down into the issue of extra management time and the value of money being used for that instead of putting more experts in front of pupils and increasing contact between pupils and teachers, which I believe is a good way of increasing attainment and achievement. Andrea, do you have anything to say about that?
