There’s an old adage that says you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
That’s why it’s hard to believe that no one has thought to tally the number of sexual assaults across the country perpetrated on students by employees of kindergarten to Grade 12 schools.
After all, we’re talking here about the safety and mental well-being of children.
But now a national inventory has been done for the first time by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. And its findings point to the urgent need for mandatory public reporting of disciplinary actions by the bodies that license teachers across the country as a first step to stopping predatory behaviour.
Right now, only three teacher licensing bodies — those in Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan — make disciplinary decisions public. In other provinces, researchers compiling the report had to rely on news stories and criminal cases as their only sources of information.
That’s serves the interest of no one but guilty teachers, who without public scrutiny can fly under the radar, unnoticed and often unpunished. It also means the public and politicians are blind to the dangers that lurk in schools. (more...)
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