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 502 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
What about grade inflation, which has been seen across the UK over the past two years? The argument made by some—I tend to believe it, based on my constituency experience—is that it ends up disadvantaging those who face the greatest challenges. You talk about the suite of considerations for entry to university, but these are the very young people who cannot access good-quality work experience, who do not have the same opportunities to take part in extracurricular activities and who do not have access to coaching for university entry exams. Why is grade inflation a good thing for them?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
That was Professor Paterson’s point, and it was also highlighted by the Scottish commission on school reform, which has said:
“scrapping examinations and relying purely on teacher judgment would create a series of perverse outcomes including:
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Unintentional bias for or against certain social or demographic groups (for example against children from deprived backgrounds ... )
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Pressure put on teachers to award the grades required for university entrance, particularly in private schools and in the most affluent state school catchment areas
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Grade inflation caused by teachers wanting their children to succeed”.
You make a case against exams, but you have not touched on any of those issues.
10:45Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
Many people in Scotland will look at the suggestion that we should become more like the US, which is probably regarded as one of the most unequal countries in the world when it comes to access to education, and think that that would be a serious departure from the Scottish education tradition. In that tradition, the aspiration at least is that every young person will leave school with a meaningful qualification. Getting rid of that seems distinctly un-Scottish. I do not see how you feel that we can achieve equality of opportunity by removing the chance to sit exams for some young people but not others. Should we not be asking why some young people are leaving school without qualifications rather than lowering the bar for a group of young people who are consistently failed? Is that not a valid point?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
It was interesting to hear you dismiss the percentage of pupils who leave school early. Given that they are often the individuals who have been most let down by the school system, do you not think that they have the right to sit for an externally assessed qualification before the education system gives up on them?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I just think that it is about recognising that successful learners are the people who go on to be active contributors and to make important decisions in our society. If we were to stop helping people to gain the qualifications that they need to break through the barriers that exist, that would be sad. That is what has been so powerful about Scottish education across the best part of a century.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Upper Secondary Education and Student Assessment
Meeting date: 10 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
The difference is about external assessment and the validity that comes from that. I will leave it there. I do not want to dominate the discussion.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
That is reassuring. The sector will be worried about the timing and the vulnerability of a number of settings, but I accept that you work to the timescale that you have.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
I have a question on the 1,140 hours workforce. You have covered the matter extensively previously, but I continue to hear about concerns from the private, voluntary and independent sector that it is not able to recruit early learning and childcare workers and that people who work in that sector are often displaced into the local authority sector. Is that still a risk to the success of the policy?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
You recognise that there is a tension between a policy objective to give headteachers autonomy and a group of headteachers not being enabled to take decisions in relation to their pupils. There is a tension between the policy objective of equity funding and, because of where the threshold is set, that opportunity not being available in all schools.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Pre-Budget Scrutiny 2022-23
Meeting date: 3 November 2021
Oliver Mundell
That is helpful. I wonder whether you have reflected on a point that is linked to the point that Mr Ewing made. There is a small group of predominantly smaller rural schools that tend to end up being ineligible for any of those funds and, anecdotally, headteachers in those schools say—I think that most reasonable people would accept that this is the case—that there is significant poverty, deprivation and exclusion from opportunities in rural areas. The headteachers of those schools do not have the opportunity to ensure the provision of educational equity for their pupils. Is that something that you would look at when considering the success of a policy?
