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 ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 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.
Filter your results Hide all filters
Displaying 1019 contributions
|
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We have guaranteed that there will be £1 billion of expenditure on the SAC over this parliamentary session. For the first time, we have a long-term commitment from the Government that it is not year-on-year funding but guaranteed funding. That was a key ask of both local government and headteachers, and that is exactly what we have delivered. There is £520 million of PEF to be distributed to schools, which is providing further certainty, and we have provided an uplift in the PEF per pupil this year. What we have seen is recognition of the fact that there needs to be a long-term commitment to this. That is what the Government has provided. We have guaranteed that the funding will be there for the next four years.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We have also guaranteed £1 billion-worth of expenditure over the parliamentary session. There is, of course, a process that we will go through annually to look at education funding, in addition to what happens within the SAC, but this is an area in which we have been able to guarantee funding in the long term, and that has been welcomed by local authorities and headteachers.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
We have made an important change in recognition that poverty exists in every area of Scotland. It is very important that we look at the role of local authorities, work with them and provide them with additional support to undertake their work. The Government recognises that there is variation within and between local authorities. One of the reasons behind the introduction of the stretch aims is to tackle the unwarranted variation between local authorities. We hope that the transparent mechanism that we are putting into the system will give a clear understanding of local ambitions.
We are clear that we need to reduce that unwarranted variation. With the support of Education Scotland, we will provide constructive challenge and support to all local authorities to ensure that they are ambitious in what they develop. We know that there is variation in outcomes between local authorities; that is often talked about. The collaborative work that local authorities are doing with Education Scotland will assist with some of that, but we know that we have more to do to tackle unwarranted variation.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
I will not dictate how Dundee City Council or any other local authority should deal with education. It is for local authorities to do that. You received evidence—not just from one of the four directors of education in front of the committee, but from others—about the fact that there is a holistic approach to funding, that local authorities will make decisions in that regard and that a headteacher can use pupil equity funding if they wish to do so, following the local authority’s decisions.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Actually, 59 per cent of children in relative poverty live outside the challenge authorities. If we continued to use the previous formula, we would be ignoring the 59 per cent of children in relative poverty who are in other parts of Scotland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that school spending per pupil is higher in Scotland than it is elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Spending is also 15.6 per cent higher in real terms than it was in 2014-15, so we have supported education—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
If you would let me—
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
The important areas that we are looking at are the measures in the national improvement framework. We are consulting on those measures to ensure that the right data is being collected and that we are collecting material that is useful to Government and to teachers.
For example, the stretch aims that are coming out from local government will look at the core areas of numeracy and literacy, but it is a core plus model, which means that local authorities are also asked to look at the wider areas around health and wellbeing so that we can determine the impact not just on attainment but on other parts of children and young people’s progress. I will bring in Graeme Logan to talk about the dashboard that is published and the information in that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
It is one of the best ways of closing the attainment gap. Tackling poverty is the other aspect that is recognised in our refreshed mission. Yes, it is about teaching and learning, but we have adapted the mission to recognise the overall impact of societal poverty.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Yes. Teaching is an integral part of that.
