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.
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
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.
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.
There are two types of keyword search:
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.
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
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:
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.
Displaying 2406 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
It is interesting that the OECD called on us to restate and re-evaluate our vision of curriculum for excellence, which, in essence, is what you have just both said. Ross Greer has a supplementary question on this.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
There was a broadband blip at the start of the question. Could you repeat the first 15 seconds or so?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Just.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
In your submission, you mention a number of times that you believe that there was a hugely political dimension. On page 3, you mention the awareness of the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections. How much of the decision making in the process was driven, in your view, by a political agenda from the Scottish Government?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
There were a lot of noises off, as you call them, in political terms. Education is a huge issue in Scotland. It is a priority in people’s lives, and that is a jolly good thing. However, the Government was clearly in the driving seat and making the decisions.
There are many questions that I could ask, but I will put just one more question to you, because I want to bring my colleagues in. On the sampling issue, you make in your submission the rather incendiary comment that
“the EIS’s trust in teacher judgement was not matched by that of the Scottish Government”.
On what basis do you say that?
11:15Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
The point that I am trying to make is that you are saying something fairly damning about the Scottish Government’s trust and belief in teachers.
Before I bring in Kaukab Stewart, the deputy convener, I have a question for Tara Lillis on a subject that we touched on with the previous panel. Tara, you mention in your submission the concept of overassessment and the compression that went on in the assessments this year. Have you or any of your members sought to define that? If so, what conclusions have you reached?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Before we hear from the first of our panels, I would like to thank all the young people who took the time to speak with us informally last week about their experiences of the alternative certification model. We really appreciate their taking the time to let us know their thoughts on what it was like for them, and how they think assessment could best be managed in future. They really were a credit to themselves. I hope that they found it as helpful as we did. It certainly provided us with a great deal of insight into the issues from their perspective. An anonymised summary of their views is provided in the committee’s public papers this week.
Our first panel of witnesses on the alternative certification model in 2021 are from the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland. We have with us Tony McDaid, executive director of education resources with South Lanarkshire Council, and Audrey May, head of service, children and families, with Dundee City Council. I welcome you both to the meeting. Does either of you have any initial comments that you would like to make before we get into the questions?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Audrey, do you feel the same way?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
Collectively as a committee, we are determined that we want to hear from young people and that we want their voices to be heard in an unfiltered way. Last week, we had a really good experience with the young people whom we spoke to.
We will go straight into the questions. As usual, I will take the convener’s prerogative and ask questions about your experience over the last period. How well supported by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Qualifications Authority did you feel during the past 18 months?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Stephen Kerr
I was interested in the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association’s survey, and I want to ask a question that is related to what Fergus Ewing was asking about. We were talking about demonstrated attainment. According to the survey, 36 per cent of teachers believed that the evidence that they had collected truly demonstrated their pupil’s attainment, but that means that 64 per cent did not. What is your reaction to that data? Should we be questioning it?