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 1714 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
Do you think that is happening?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
That was to do with additional evidence and not exceptional circumstances.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
I want to look slightly beyond the qualifications process and immediate assessments to the learning. I was struck by Seamus Searson’s comment about pupils being driven into the ground by assessments and the convener’s remarks about compression being the theme. We understand that there was, in essence, less teaching across the year for a variety of reasons, particularly for some cohorts. There was less time in school, so learning was difficult to access. We have taken evidence from young people in the past couple of weeks, and it is clear that many of them feel that they have not learned as much as others have learned. What challenges will that present as young people progress to the next stages of their qualifications or, indeed, their lives?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
I declare an interest as a serving councillor on Dundee City Council, which is Audrey May’s employer. Also, Audrey May is a former teacher of mine. That is the more interesting point. She was a very young teacher.
We are going to talk quite a bit about qualifications, grades and outcomes, first and foremost. The other side of the outcome that I am interested in is knowledge and what young people learned.
I think that Tony McDaid made a point about missing the workhorse term and an awful lot of people missing an awful lot of time in school. As we look forward, what concerns do you have about what those young people might not know because of what they have missed, and what they have learned?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
That makes sense to me. However, it worries me a little when I hear from young people who are going from highers to advanced highers, for instance, and when I speak to university principals and lecturers about people coming out of school with perhaps a lack of knowledge compared to what they might have had otherwise. The question whether we, as a country, are adapting to address that worries me a little.
I do not want to burrow too deeply into that, because I have another question.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
Data that were released yesterday show the scale of the attainment gap produced by the ACM—or the alternative certification model; I am trying to avoid acronyms as best as I can. They show that around 75 per cent of private school pupils got A grades compared with fewer than half in the state sector. Do you think that the system benefited the most affluent at the expense of the poorest?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
The move from teacher judgment to demonstrated attainment in the second year obviously created many of the pressures that you are talking about in terms of the assessment model and having to go through that. As part of the process, it removed taking into account the circumstances that many of the young people you describe were facing. They had to get the exams done, as there had to be demonstrated attainment rather than judgment. Does the absence of exceptional circumstances and appeals not go against what you are saying about the lived experience of young people?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
I am sure that the universities would talk about the cap on student numbers that the Scottish Government put in place. Seamus Searson and Tara Lillis, do you have comments on these issues?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Alternative Certification Model
Meeting date: 22 September 2021
Michael Marra
But there is a cohort of kids now and from the previous year who feel that the system has not served them well and that those exceptional circumstances have not been taken into account.
10:30Education, Children and Young People Committee
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Report
Meeting date: 8 September 2021
Michael Marra
On that issue, I have struggled to understand some of the process in my home city of Dundee. There has been a collapse in choice for many students. It is not clear to me whether that is being driven only by the process that we are describing or whether the fact that the council administration has cut one in eight teachers—12 per cent of all teachers—from schools has resulted in that kind of narrowing.
Can you comment, from the work that you did, on the resourcing of choice versus the structure of choice? What are the constraining factors?
