Nunavut's new school violence reporting system was underused in its 1st year

The first year of Nunavut's new school violence tracking system saw the database underused, and many teachers who were tasked to use it lacked the training to do so, according to Nunavut's teacher's union.

In October 2022, the department of education launched its long-awaited school violence data tracking system. Some nine years in the making, the database is intended to standardize school violence tracking across the territory and give policymakers a more accurate picture of the issue to help allocate resources to address it.

In its infancy, the database tracked 362 incidents of violence, and 48 reports of property damage — numbers which both the department and the Nunavut Teachers' Association (NTA) say do not capture the full scope of what actually transpired last school year.

"We're seeing people are starting to become familiar with the system, and that's a good thing," said NTA president Justin Matchett.

"But it's also showing us people are not really understanding what types of things we're looking for."

Matchett pointed specifically to incidents of discrimination or harassment, noting it's a topic which the union deals with frequently in its office.

"We have seen an uptake in discrimination, usually race-based, within Nunavut over the last couple of years," he said.

"That's not something that has been reported on in the system."

Notably, Matchett said as of last week, the system hadn't generated any reports for this school year. At the time, 11 communities were into their fourth week of school, and another nine communities were into their third week.

"Maybe that's just a really good thing and things have been running smoothly," he said.

"But generally, from what we see, there would typically be a few reports by now. So we might need to refresh our members on the system and the importance of using it."

The reported numbers from last year are a far cry from the frequency of incidents reported in a 2021 CBC News investigation, which counted more than 1,000 incidents of violence in Nunavut schools in the COVID-shortened 2019-2020 school year.

Read CBC Nunavut's investigation into school violence in Nunavut:

The investigation had school principals across Nunavut fill out a spreadsheet, created by CBC News, as part of an access to information request.