The Government has launched a draft legal notice for public consultation concerning data protection in education, which amongst others regulates the collection of information about students.
This consultation exercise is in line with the concept of open government and aims to gather feedback from the general public, civil society organizations, trade unions, business organizations, political parties, governmental institutions and all others that would like to contribute towards this process.
Government has an obligation to address deficiencies in the education system resulting in a good number of students with little or no qualifications and lack of skills or capabilities to enter the labour market.
To address this deficiency, as promised in the electoral manifesto, the need is felt to enhance our educational system to include and integrate all students and avoid drop outs and early school leavers to the detriment of the students themselves and of Maltese society at large.
These measures could only be achieved if both educational authorities and institutions, as well as examination bodies, work together to address this problem at national level.
To implement the necessary measures, the personal data of students have to be processed but this has to be done in accordance with the Data Protection Act to reach the necessary balance between the need for processing and the right to protect and safeguard personal data.
To this effect, in the past weeks, a working group chaired by the Data Protection Commissioner carried out an evaluation exercise to provide solutions as to how the processing of personal information in the educational sector could be achieved.
The working group was composed of representatives from the Ministry of Education and Employment, the Ministry for Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties, church and independent schools, MCAST, ITS, University as well as representatives from the Directorate for Educational Services.
Following agreement between all interested parties, a legal notice has been drafted to regulate processing in the whole educational sector and is being put up for public consultation.
The draft legal notice can be accessed from http://msdc.gov.mt/en/Public_Consultations/MEDE/Pages/Consultations/ProcessingOfPersonalDataEducationSector.aspx or directly from the Ministry for Education’s website education.gov.mt
Feedback can be sent either directly from the website or else by email on [email protected] or by mail.
PN: legal notice should be revoked first
In its reaction to the news, the Nationalist Party has welcomed the government’s decision to launch a public consultation exercise, but is insisting that the government should first revoke the controversial legal notice granting the Education Minister unprecedented access to student data.
In a joint statement, education spokesman Joe Cassar, consumer affairs spokesman Paula Mifsud Bonnici and civil liberties spokesman Claudette Buttigieg said that in a “serious society,” consultation took place at the outset, and not after a decision has been made and a law has been implemented.
Whilst the MPs welcomed the consultation exercise in any case, they pointed out that the PN could not but point out the government’s inconsistency in this case.
They observed that the government first stealthily introduced the legal notice, and defended it when the opposition criticised it; government MPs even voted against an opposition motion calling for the legal notice to be annulled.
However, they added, the government subsequently announced that the legal notice would be changed, established a working group to look into it, and finally announced a public consultation process.
The three MPs also emphasised that the PN’s own position remained consistent: that no minister should be empowered to access such sensitive and confidential data about anyone.