P.E.I. schools need centralized system to track staff sexual misconduct: report

Prince Edward Island's provincial flag flies in Ottawa, Friday, July 3, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

CHARLOTTETOWN — The former chief justice of Prince Edward Island says schools need a centralized system to track sexual misconduct complaints against staff members.

David Jenkins’s independent report, commissioned by the Education Department in May 2025, says there are gaps in the system that prevent administrators from tracking the past conduct of employees in other schools, including if a teacher has been blocked from working at another location.

The report says student safety policies are “generally adequate” but are applied too narrowly with a focus on sexual conduct and not enough emphasis on early-stage incidents that may lead to more issues later on.

“Policies purport to address and preclude inappropriate conduct of all kinds, but in practice the focus is on sexual misconduct, and more specifically on reportable sexual conduct,” says the report.

“As a result, there is insufficient recognition that that risk starts with inappropriate behaviour in the nature of boundary transgressions and that prevention being the best investment, early-stage inappropriate conduct too merits appropriate employer intervention.”

Minister of Education and Early Years Robin Croucher said in a statement Tuesday that education officials have already begun to make changes.

“Neither the department nor the school authorities waited for the report’s completion before making immediate improvements to policies and procedures to help protect student safety in the interim,” said the minister. “We will compare those changes to the recommendations in the report to better understand where further improvements will be made.”

Croucher tasked Jenkins with leading the independent third-party review into the department, the Public Schools Branch (PSB) and la Commission scolaire de langue francaise in May. It came about a week after a CBC report said a former substitute teacher had pleaded guilty to four charges related to child sexual abuse and exploitation material, and an unrelated incident of sexually touching a girl in a primary school.

The report says there had been two internal complaints against the accused, Alan Craswell, in Island schools: one in June 2023, and another at a different school in April 2024. Both cases involved allegations that the teacher touched students in the classroom during a game, says the report. In both cases school officials saw the touching as inappropriate, but not sexual, says the document. The parents were involved and the decision was made to handle the matter at the school level without police.

Without a central tracking system, the report says the administration at the second school could not have known the Craswell had previously been blocked from teaching at another location.

“Based on all (school officials) knew at the time, they did not suspect that Craswell’s acts were sexual in nature. Given what they knew at the time, I would not find their judgment was unreasonable,” said Jenkins’ report.

When the charges against Craswell were reported by the media in August 2024, the report says the PBS started a system-wide investigation of his decade of substitute teaching. Despite the investigation, the report says the PBS did not inform the education department about the first incident.

“In November, the department learned about the (first) incident through the criminal justice system,” says the report. “We are not in a position to find this omission was intentional; however, it remains that PSB knew about the (first) complaint in August and did not inform the department until November.”

The PBS could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Jenkins is recommending the new records system be staffed by a small team of about three staffers, one person from the PSB, another from the department and somebody with expertise in social work and interviewing children.

Other report recommendations include increased screening and criminal record checks of employees, a requirement that all substitute teacher assignments be booked through one digital system, more staff training and the development of a sexual misconduct policy and code of conduct.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 10, 2026.

- By Devin Stevens in Halifax.