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 1071 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
You never know.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I agree with the sentiment behind Mr Adam’s question. I do not yet know whether there will be an announcement today about lifting the two-child cap, but we know that that would alleviate child poverty at the stroke of a pen. There are many actions that the UK Government could take and I hope that we will hear more about that today. Unless both our Governments work in unison to tackle child poverty, it will not work. We know that the Scottish child payment has been a game changer in ensuring that Scotland’s child poverty levels stay lower than those in other parts of the United Kingdom, but we must see a concerted effort across these islands and must be able to work with the UK Government, so I really hope that we will see more progress from the UK Government to that end today.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
There are examples from across the brief. I see Mr Dey indicating that he wants to come in, and Mr Logan has just reminded me of the CivTech work that he alluded to earlier in relation to AI and the points that Mr Greer has raised about reducing teacher workload. Those are examples of public-private collaboration to try to drive a different approach to tackling an on-going challenge, as we heard from Mr Greeonr.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I am sorry to interrupt, convener, but Mr Dey might wish to come in on that point before we move on.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
I am happy to engage with Mr Greer on the substantive points in the paper that he submitted some two years ago. More broadly, however, any engagement on teacher workload that has me at the table must also have COSLA there, because we are not going to change things if we do not get local government in the room. I am happy to be here and to give evidence for as many hours as the committee will have me, but if COSLA is not part of those discussions, we will not effect change in our classrooms.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
As I said in a response to Mr Rennie earlier, as part of the budget agreement, we got an agreement from all local authorities, through COSLA, that they would work back to 2023 levels. I am really pleased that the deal was made. It was made in good faith and it involved a lot of extra public money, including for teacher numbers and additional support needs, so I cannot believe that any local authority in Scotland is taking that additional money from central Government and planning to reduce teacher numbers, having signed up to those conditions and to making meaningful progress on reducing class contact time.
We are engaging with a number of local authorities on the substantive issues, but our understanding is that the budget deal remains absolute and that local authorities will, in good faith, work back to 2023 teacher numbers. If they all did that tomorrow, I could deliver on reducing class contact time in primary schools, because we know through our independent modelling that we would have enough teachers to do that. These things must not be divorced: when we talk about teacher numbers and reducing class contact time, it is really important is that they sit together. Having a sustainable workforce will help to reduce class contact time, which will allow teachers to engage in reform.
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Is there a specific area of the education brief that you are interested in?
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
On the substantive point, I do not want there to be surplus primary school teachers. I would like them all to be in employment—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
Mr Rennie is asking me to make a guess about something that will happen in the future. That is not my responsibility—
Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]
Meeting date: 11 June 2025
Jenny Gilruth
The overall PTR is 13.3, but I do not have the ASN figure in front of me. When it asked ministers to appear today, the committee did not provide us with a detailed breakdown of all the areas that it wished to cover. However, I am more than happy to write to the committee with any of that detail.