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 2715 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Additional Support Needs and Care Experienced Young People (Impact of Covid-19)
Meeting date: 17 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
I apologise to colleagues who have not yet had their turn; that will come at the beginning of the next session. I want to be fair to everybody.
I thank Bruce Adamson, Stephen McGhee and Linda O’Neill for their evidence, which has been useful, interesting and informative. I thank you all for your time.
I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
10:45 Meeting suspended.10:54 On resuming—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
A couple of colleagues said that they might want to ask additional questions, so I will turn to them. James, do you want to come back in or are you content?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
That is evidence of what knowledge can empower you to contribute to a committee meeting—well done, Fergus. You did that from memory, which is probably an object study in itself.
We turn now to Ross Greer for a new line of questioning.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
Quite a few colleagues want to come in on the back of Willie Rennie’s very interesting line of questioning. I want to wind back a bit to the issue of the school leaving age, and I call Oliver Mundell for a couple of quick-fire questions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
I am sorry, Michael, but you will have to be very quick.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
To follow on from the subject area that Stephanie Callaghan asked about, I note that, on page 46 of your report, you quite rightly mentioned
“students’ perceptions and views of assessment arrangements”,
but what about employers and universities? What are their perceptions of assessment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
Ross Greer is joining us from the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26. We are glad to have him on board. Michael Marra will take us in a slightly different direction.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
I welcome everyone back to this evidence-taking session with Professor Stobart. I call Oliver Mundell.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
It is good to hear that, reputationally, you saw our education system as being better than the system somewhere else, simply because it was Scottish. We can all sign up to that, on the basis of our national pride.
Were you surprised by what you discovered about the complexity and the nuances that you have just described?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Stephen Kerr
Agenda item 2 is evidence from Professor Gordon Stobart, emeritus professor of education at University College London, on his report providing a comparative perspective of upper secondary education and student assessment in Scotland. Professor Stobart has worked as a secondary school teacher, as an educational psychologist, as a senior researcher in policy-related environments and as an academic. His expertise is in assessment, with much of his recent work focusing on assessment for learning.
Professor Stobart’s report was published as part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s series of working papers, in which the OECD publishes papers that describe the preliminary results of work in progress in order to stimulate discussion of issues on which the OECD works. I stress that the report represents the views of Professor Stobart rather than those of the OECD.
We are delighted to have you with us, Professor Stobart. You are very welcome. Before we open up our session to questions, I invite you to make an opening statement.
