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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 856 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Good morning, panel. What are your views on the extent to which regionalisation has achieved its aims? Can you talk about the positives—and, I guess, any negatives—that have come out of it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Colleges Regionalisation Inquiry
Meeting date: 21 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Other colleagues, no doubt, will cover the funding issues. Does anybody else want to contribute on this topic?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
From a statistical point of view, it strikes me that 2019 and 2022 are comparable with regard to assessing performance, which indicates an improvement in closing the attainment gap, albeit not as much of an improvement as we might want.
Fiona Robertson, when you talk about a fair and credible assessment system, how do you explain the fluctuations in the numbers in the period between those two years?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
I know that Robert Quinn wants to come in. It is important that that evaluation is provided, because you should not be left to mark your own homework.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
How many times has the oversight board met in practice? How does it operate? How are external stakeholders inputting into the process?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
The committee will look forward to seeing that evaluation work.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Will all of that be fed into the review?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
It is about not only how it is done but the appearance of how it is done. Mr Marra made the point that, at face value, having the SQA so dominant in the process could be questioned by those who fear a rebranding and nothing more. What real assurance can be given that this is a genuine process that will get us to where it is clear we need to be in relation to not only forming a new body but the ethos of that body? It is perfectly legitimate for the SQA’s input over the past few years and in a broader sense to be taken on board, but we should also be looking at the issue afresh. How is the oversight organisation that you are running, Mr Baxter, actually operating in practice?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Are we operating in a way that involves looking to the end destination—what it is that we want to achieve—and working out how we best get there, as opposed to simply tweaking the existing practice and approach?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Qualifications Authority
Meeting date: 7 September 2022
Graeme Dey
Perhaps the biggest complexity of all was the impact of Covid-19 on the learning experience of those young people—and, let’s face it, the teaching environment for teachers.
This is perhaps a difficult question to answer, but, given that 2022 is not directly comparable with 2019 regarding the whole experience, when will we get back to a point at which we could reasonably compare a year with 2019 and reasonably measure progress or otherwise? Are we talking about next year or the year after? When might we be able to do that?
