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 1731 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
No, that was helpful—thank you.
The point that I will go on to make in my line of questioning is that many issues that are categorised as additional support needs are non-educational. They might be related to health or wider society, or they might be domestic or related to substance abuse, family or bereavement. Teachers can do nothing or very little about many of those things, in the sense that what happens inside the classroom will not affect what happens outside the classroom.
Is that a scenario in which you will never be able to crack the nut? Given that so many other public agencies and bodies are involved in tackling those wider societal issues that are resulting in poor outcomes for young people, what happens in the classroom will never be able to fix that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
You said that there is more that “we” need to do—who is the “we”? If we work on the assumption that teachers and pupil support assistants are working flat out and are doing their very best—they are at capacity, in the sense that there is nothing more that they could do to help to get it right for every child—where does the gap lie? Where is the missing link?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Convener, I am sure that a good follow-up to this evidence session would be to hear from teaching unions in response to some of the evidence that we have heard. Perhaps we could think about that.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
So, a small proportion of schools have a separate, dedicated provision, rather than mainstreaming additional support for learning assistance.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Does every secondary school in Scotland have someone who supports children with their mental health? Is there a qualified, dedicated mental health support contact—not a teacher—in every secondary school in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
That is very helpful. Laura, did you want to come in?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Yes. The Morgan review picked up on that—it said that other vocational destinations should be seen as positive outcomes as well when measuring like for like. That is a very good point.
Mr Rennick, your department covers education and justice, I believe.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Is that not an interesting point? I am looking at the table that Mr Beattie provided, which relates to just one council. I appreciate that every council will have different pressure points, but young people who have a social, emotional or behavioural difficulty make up the largest group in the ASL category. One can only assume that the steady rise in that percentage in the past five to 10 years—it is probably a long-term trend—has taken place because, when there is a decline in discipline outside the school environment, in the home environment in particular, that behaviour translates into the school environment.
Pupils who are experiencing wider societal or emotional difficulties in the home environment or in social environments are bringing that into the classroom. There is only so much that a teacher can do in that respect. If public agencies or touch points of public services are letting those families down, are we not fighting a losing battle in the education environment? That is the point that I am trying to make.
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Members of the Scottish Parliament often do school visits. Sometimes, we get asked to host a class for an hour or two, which, I find, is usually to give the teacher a break. When we observe classrooms across our various regions and constituencies, it is interesting that a proportion of pupils in them are clearly disruptive. When teachers have to deal with that, it is to the detriment of the learning of those pupils who want to get on or are particularly gifted in certain subject areas. That can be observed even in passing on short visits to classrooms, and I presume that that is a mainstream issue.
How much work has the Government done to look at the negative effect that the presumption of mainstreaming is having on exceptional pupils or pupils who are categorised as being “more able”?
Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Additional Support for Learning
Meeting date: 7 May 2025
Jamie Greene
Good—thank you, convener.
