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 928 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Willie Rennie
Is it that long term?
09:45Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Willie Rennie
I was fascinated by what you said about the work of the attainment advisers. The feedback that I get from a lot of teachers is that they are exhausted as a result of the pandemic and that they still feel as though they are in the middle of the pandemic, because a lot of staff and kids are off sick. A lot of the children have fallen behind in relation to where teachers would expect them to be. On Monday, a teacher told us that they were frustrated by the latest idea coming along when they already had a mountain of work to do. I realise that the issue is probably much more sophisticated than that.
You are under pressure from us and others to improve attainment. At the same time, you are getting pushback from the schools, which are saying, “We’ve got enough to handle here without you coming up with new ideas.” How do you judge that? Can you explain what kind of discussion you would have to make sure that you do not overwhelm the schools, while driving forward improvement? Can you talk through that a little?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Willie Rennie
There has rightly been a focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, but are we lifting everybody up right across the school population? What is the effect of the challenge?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 11 May 2022
Willie Rennie
I know that the pandemic has affected things quite significantly, but I am interested in this claim that we were making progress before the pandemic. That difference was pretty marginal and the rate of progress slow—at that rate, it would take another 35 years to close the attainment gap. Surely we cannot be satisfied with that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Willie Rennie
Yes. I want to know how we can be so confident that we are reducing the number of teachers on temporary contracts when the use of temporary contracts has been going on for years. It has been said that it was the additional funding throughout the pandemic that resulted in a growth in the number of temporary positions, but it was happening for years before that. How can we be confident that the number will not creep back up again in future years?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Willie Rennie
That was a really helpful explanation of how the system has evolved. I take two things from it. The first is about the listening and understanding that is going on, and the second is about the fact that headteachers are reaching beyond the school gates into the family home, which is a significant change.
The committee often looks at challenges and barriers, because we want to make the system better. In that light, I want to raise two particular issues. First, although school leaders and headteachers are central to making the system work, we have seen a shortage of headteachers in recent years and the emergence of more joint headships in some areas. Does that pose a challenge to improving the system further?
Secondly, can we get the right expertise when it is available, to meet the needs of the variety of pupils that we are trying to assist? Are the specialisms there?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Willie Rennie
Just to follow up on—[Inaudible.]—this morning. There has been massive growth in the number of temporary teachers, not just during the pandemic but before that. I am curious about how we can be absolutely sure that we are reducing the number of temporary contracts. Some teachers are going from temporary contract to temporary contract, sometimes for up to six years. How are we managing to be so confident that we are reducing the numbers?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 4 May 2022
Willie Rennie
Yes, it did.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Willie Rennie
You have highlighted that there seems not to be a grasp of the competing pressures. Where is that coming from? Is it the councils? Is it the Government? Why do they not get it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Willie Rennie
I know that time is marching on.
I have a flavour of it, but I want to really understand what life is like in the classroom just now. We have heard about the various pressures. The question is for Andrea Bradley, in particular. We are just coming out of the pandemic—some people say that we are still in it—and there are significant mental health problems. There is pressure to perform on attainment and closing the attainment gap. I speak to many teachers, but I want to hear from you what life is like in the classroom.