The fall sitting of the Nunavut Legislative Assembly wrapped up last week but many departments have overdue homework.

Only eight of 21 departments or agencies have submitted all required reports to the legislature.

The reports keep the legislative assembly up to date on the departments’ progress. John Quirke, clerk of the legislative assembly, said it's important to have these reports so MLAs can ask questions during Question Period.

He said departments have struggled because there are not enough people to write reports.

The GN started issuing a list of outstanding documents in 2001, and Quirke said the list used to be much longer.

“Over the past couple of years, the one just tabled recently, there’s been a significant reduction in the ones that are outstanding. So departments, in fact, have caught up with the tabling requirements for the house,” he said.

But some departments are doing worse than others. For example, the department of Justice has 13 overdue reports, some dating back to 2003 and 2004.

The department of Environment has four outstanding documents. Education had three but submitted one, its 2009-2010 Annual Report, on November 9.

“As it was a new requirement under the Education Act, we had to fill our statistics and information coordinator (position) because the Education Annual Report is full of a lot of statistical information and graphs,” said Kathy Ookpik, deputy education minister.

There is no penalty for filing the documents late. The outstanding documents stay on a list until the reports are completed.