Nunavut misses mark on school violence database as child advocate slams government's poor recordkeeping

Nunavut's Department of Education still doesn't have a formal system in place to accurately track violent incidents in the territory's schools, despite repeated commitments to have one up and running by this fall.

CBC News inquired into the status of the system back in September, at which time a department spokesperson said key staff in all regions would be trained on the system by the end of October, with a planned rollout shortly thereafter.

But those plans have now stalled as the system is undergoing a privacy impact assessment. 

In a statement, the department said such assessments are "standard practice for all Government of Nunavut websites and online forms that may have access to or collect private information."

The territorial privacy office said these assessments are needed to make sure the government has the legal authority to collect the data it wants, and to ensure there are checks and balances on how it will store and use the data.

"This new reporting mechanism was intended to launch this fall and we came up short on meeting that goal," the education department's statement read.

The delay is the latest in a long string of missed deadlines for a project that has been eight years in the making. In 2013, the department and Nunavut's teachers union formed a joint anti-violence committee. Getting a tracking system in place was one of the action items from the committee.

The department reaffirmed a fall 2021 rollout of the system following a CBC News investigation earlier this year into violence in Nunavut schools. The investigation compiled a territory-wide snapshot of the number of violent incidents in a school year, marking the first time the government had pulled data on the issue.

Then-education minister David Joanasie even took to the floor of the Legislative Assembly in the following weeks, committing to the fall 2021 implementation target.

There's no timeline for when the system will be up and running, because privacy impact assessments take various lengths of time, according to the territorial privacy office.

"The department expects that once the new violence in schools reporting mechanism is launched, in addition to the current paper-based process, we will be able to better allocate the necessary resources to support our students and staff in the reduction of incidents in our schools," the department said.

Violence data being collected by paper

The Department of Education emphasized it does track violent incidents using a paper-based process – pointing to its ability to report violence statistics to Nunavut's Child and Youth representative for the office's latest annual report which was published last week.

But even the accuracy of those statistics is questionable.

The department reported 165 violent or physical assault incidents in the 2020-21 school year – an 84-per-cent drop from the 1,093 incidents reported from CBC's investigation from the previous school year.

It's not immediately clear what accounted for the steep drop in the number of reported incidents. CBC News asked for an explanation, after the deadline for this story.

Data collection is a government-wide problem, child advocate says

The government's struggles around data tracking is among the central themes in this year's annual report from the territory's child and youth advocate.

In her report, Jane Bates wrote she had "deep concerns about both the lack of completed documentation detailing significant events and decisions about young people's lives and the difficulty in retrieving it."

And while Bates acknowledged in her report some departments are turning a corner, others have had "no meaningful change."

In particular, the Department of Family Services was unable to provide Bates' office with data on why kids in Nunavut are being referred to the department for services. The numbers the department did provide are also confirmed by the department itself to be inaccurate.

"The importance of documentation is, significant events in a young person's life are not being recorded," Bates said in an interview with CBC News. She classified "significant events" as incidents ranging from child abuse or neglect to mental health concerns.

"If you're not documenting those significant events in that child's life, how are you formulating services?"

Bates said one silver lining was some departments – like the Department of Health – had more data available than previously. But in her report, Bates noted the most current health data is three years old.

"You need to acknowledge that there is a problem, you need to understand the scope and magnitude of that problem. And the only way that you can do that is by collecting data and knowing how vast the magnitude of your issue is," Bates said.