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Search help
To search this website
Type the search term or terms into the search box on the top right of the page. Click on Go.
Phrase searching
You can also use a phrase – a sequence of words that describes in more detail what you are looking for – for example, "employment law timetable" or "pension scheme guides". When entering a phrase, you must surround it with double quote characters ("like this").
OR Searches
If you are searching for more than one topic, then to search for records that relate to either topic, write the text OR between the topics – for example finance OR budget
AND Searches
You do not need to type AND in between two search terms; our search function will automatically search for both words.
NOT Searches
To search for records that only relate to one topic, and you specifically want to exclude another topic, write the text NOT between the topics – for example school NOT nursery. Only records that relate to the first topic and not to the second one will be returned by the search.
Complex Searches
AND, OR and NOT searches can be combined by using AND, OR and NOT together – for example (school OR college) NOT (playschool OR nursery). Brackets can be used, as in this example, to describe how your search should be combined.
Performing the Search
When you have entered your search terms, click on the Go button to perform your search.
Search results
A list of all the items that matched your search is shown in the Search Results page. Underneath the Results heading is the total number of items found.
The terms are returned in relevance ranked order.
The relevance ranking is performed by rating the relevance of results by the number of times your search terms appeared in the document and their presence in specific fields that describe the document (metadata).
Date sorting
You may also click on the Date link to re-sort documents in date order – i.e. most recent documents will display at the top of the list.
Further sorting options
Results from specific site sections.
This option enables the users to select specific section of our website – headings are taken from the sections you will find within the our site, and the results are filtered automatically during your search so that individual results are sorted into their correct section. You can click on a section heading to see results from that section only.
Search results
Each item is shown as a brief title, a longer description, where the words you searched for are high-lighted, and information about the section of the website it came from, and the date when it was last updated. Some of this information may not be shown for some items, as it may not be available.
Pages
The results are grouped into pages of 10 items.
If there are more than 10 results for your search, Click on the numbers (1,2,3…) to move on through the list of result pages.
Refining a Search
Your search is displayed in the search form at the top of both the Search Results and Detailed Results pages. If your search doesn't return the results you want, change any of the information in the search form and add new information as required. Run the search again by clicking on the Go button.
Misspellings
Don’t worry if you misspell a word; the search will be performed regardless making a best guess about what you meant, but it will also offer you options to change your spelling. Simply click on the offered search terms and the search will be performed again for you.