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 łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees will automatically update to show only the łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of łÉČËżěĘÖ and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of łÉČËżěĘÖ 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 1138 contributions
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
It seems that you do not understand why the rate has fallen. Why has the percentage gone down?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
I will stop there, but I am really concerned that you do not know why that has happened. We really performed well—it was the golden nugget—and now the amount of funding is dropping. You have not given an explanation as to why, and I do not think that we are going to get one.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
We are a third of the way through this session of the Parliament and seven years on from when the First Minister made a commitment to prioritise education. However, I would argue that the improvement has been marginal at best. I do not really want to trade stats, because we could be here all day if we did that, so let me be fair—I am always fair. The ACEL figures show that, in the past five years, the literacy attainment gap has been cut at primary level but we are seeing only a 1 per cent improvement, whereas, at level 3 in secondary, the gap has grown by almost 3 per cent. Are you satisfied with that situation?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
Okay. My next question focuses on the pace of reform. The Parliament voted in 2017 or so to get rid of the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland, and we will get the replacements in 2024, seven years later. Following the Stobart review and the OECD review of the transition from the broad general education to the senior phase and the two-term dash, we will get Louise Hayward’s report in May. I really want to know whether that will be a worked-up plan. Will it be ready to implement within this parliamentary session? How long will it take?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
I have one final question, which is about research. Scotland used to punch well above its weight in that area, and we still do, but not as much as we used to. We used to get 15 per cent of the UK research councils’ funding each year, but that amount has now dropped to 12.5 per cent. Why has that happened?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
The minister cannot be happy that we pay workers two different pay rates for doing exactly the same job. Workers who happen to be in the unfortunate position of working in a private sector nursery are paid much less than those in council nurseries. That cannot be right, can it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
What does “substantially eliminate” mean?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
I am just trying to get a definition of what “substantially eliminate” means. We all thought before that you were going to abolish the gap completely, but now we understand that the position has been refined. We could argue about how that developed, but I am still unclear about how we know whether the gap has been substantially eliminated. Is there a number? Are you expecting the gap to reach a certain level, which you would call “substantially eliminating” it? If so, what is it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
It is important, however. The attainment gap is massive—enormous—and we were slipping down the international rankings. That is why the OECD report was commissioned, so there was a crisis, and I have to say that the way in which the cabinet secretary presented it sounded incredibly complacent.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Meeting date: 18 January 2023
Willie Rennie
No—the question is about the performance of Scottish universities. What is your analysis of why the amount of funding has gone from 15 per cent of the UK research councils’ funding to 12 per cent?