A legal notice allowing the Education Minister to seek information on students has been put on hold.

Evarist Bartolo said it would not be enforced until a working group, set up by the Data Protection Commissioner to analyse the implications, concluded its work. In April, the Opposition challenged the legal notice in Parliament, arguing that the minister was being given wide powers to pry on students unnecessarily.

Mr Bartolo said it was necessary to provide the educational authorities with information to offer targeted help to vulnerable students. The motion was defeated in Parliament but Mr Bartolo said that, although the Data Protection Commissioner had been consulted during every step of the drafting process, he was ready to renew the consultation process with the new commissioner, Saviour Cachia, who was appointed in April.

Mr Bartolo said yesterday he sought assistance from Mr Cachia, who reconstituted the working group on education.

“I have confidence in the working group and, therefore, decided that the legal notice would not be implemented until the group completed its work,” he said.

Meanwhile, the University Students’ Council welcomed both the suspension of the legal notice and the new working group, which includes representatives from all educational institutions.

It said that, over the past months, it presented proposals to the relevant entities addressing its concerns on the possible infringement of student data protection.

These include the use of pseudonymised data instead of legally-valid identification document numbers, a clearer explanation of the scope of the legislation and an opt-out system.