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 1589 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
I will stick with the point about evaluation. I am interested in examples of local good practice. This morning, a number of anecdotal examples have been given of good practice in deploying the funds, but I am interested in whether any of the witnesses are aware of schools, clusters, local authorities or even regional improvement collaboratives that are already doing a really good job of local evaluation. It would be of considerable interest to the committee if you could point us towards examples of successful evaluation in practice. I ask Jim Thewliss to answer first.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
I have one final question, which is a bit of a two-parter. I go back to Bob Doris’s line of questioning about the new guidance around annual reporting to parent councils, but also to his questions around longitudinal studies, which I think are very important.
On one level, I think that it is a very good idea to make sure that there is a clear expectation of local accountability through, for example, those annual reports. However, there is a bit of me that is concerned that that then creates an expectation that we can and should be able to measure the impact of some of this stuff within a year, whereas we have spent quite a lot of this morning talking about the fact that, whether over a year or even an entire parliamentary session, we cannot close the poverty-related attainment gap in such a short period of time.
I am interested in your reflections on how we get that balance right between making sure that there is robust local accountability and not creating unrealistic expectations, whether among parents or at local authority level or, indeed, at the parliamentary or national level.
I am most interested in your thoughts on where responsibility for longitudinal studies should lie. Is that something that schools, clusters, local authorities or RICs should be doing, or should it be done nationally by Education Scotland, or even directly by the Government? Where is the most appropriate place for longitudinal evaluation to be organised? We will start with Jim Thewliss.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
On the second question about responsibility for longitudinal work, we could do a national study and Education Scotland could be responsible for that, but are there levels beneath that where you think that such a study would be appropriate?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you very much. Before I bring in Mr Corbett, I point out that he was my English teacher—I do not think that I mentioned that at the previous committee meeting—so if any colleagues have complaints about my approach to Scottish education, they can take that up with him after the meeting. [Laughter.]
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you very much. We would certainly be very grateful for that. Would any of the other witnesses like to provide any specific examples?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you very much. That was really useful.
I believe that Greg Dempster is looking to come in.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
You again mentioned what you said at the start of the meeting about the difference between attainment and achievement, and about ensuring that we get the wider measures of achievement right. My question is similar to the one that I asked a moment ago. Are you aware of any local authorities that are taking that more rounded, achievement-based approach, or is the picture still pretty consistent across the country, in so far as we are consistently being too narrow by looking just at attainment?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 20 April 2022
Ross Greer
Thank you very much. Andrea Bradley and Mike Corbett want to come in. I am conscious that I am probably eating into colleagues’ time, though, so, if you do not mind, I ask you to be brief in your responses.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Ross Greer
I would like to stick with the role of Parliament. I have the impression that we parliamentarians are perhaps a bit less pessimistic about the role that we have collectively played in the NPF.
I am interested in the feedback from the organisations that you spoke to. Did any of them—in particular, those that have made sure that they have embedded the NPF in their practice—refer to the idea that Parliament scrutinising them specifically on that was playing a role in their embedding it successfully?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework
Meeting date: 29 March 2022
Ross Greer
That is an excellent example of what I was going to ask in my final question. There might be other examples that you wish to give. I am particularly keen that we ensure that the outcome of the process is not just a burst, in the next couple of years, of understanding and enthusiasm for the NPF, then five or 10 years from now, when all the individuals involved have moved on to different positions, we have to start the process all over again. How do we make sure—induction, which you talked about, seems to be the key—that the NPF is embedded permanently in structures and practice, and that there is not just a temporary change in culture, depending on personnel turnover?
