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Karl Schembri
Parents attending a Mother’s Day school concert last week found they could not photograph or film their children after the headmaster decided this went against data protection laws.
The headmaster of the Marija Bambina Primary School in Mellieha, Joseph Abela, informed parents at the start of the concert on Friday 7 May that they could not use their cameras because of the data protection laws which he claimed prevented them from recording precious moments in their children’s lives.
“We were very disappointed,” one parent told MaltaToday. “Because of the ban, we won’t have photos of our children singing with their class mates. What message are we passing on to the children about the world? Come on; this is ridiculous.”
The headmaster, who admits he was faced with a dilemma, says his decision was taken to protect children after some parents had objected to their children being photographed in school. They had filled in the new data protection forms distributed in all schools earlier this year.
But the headmaster admitted to “suffering from a guilt complex,” because of having denied the parents the opportunity to innocently photograph their children and would like the Education Division to come with a clear standard policy in this regard to avoid similar cases in the future.
“It’s a sensitive issue, and a new one too,” he said. “As a school we have to safeguard children’s privacy. While that is easy to guarantee for individual children whose parents do not want them to appear in the class photos on the school album, it is quite a different matter when it comes to a concert involving the whole school. I couldn’t guarantee that all parents taking pictures were doing so in good faith. At the same time, I felt very sorry for all those parents who wished to photograph their children. I understand them.”
The incident sheds light on problems of interpretation of the recently enforced data protection laws when it comes to what an Education Ministry spokesman called “borderline cases” involving school children.
The laws require that parents give their written consent for the publication or broadcasting of children’s images with their full names and surnames. This works fine with staged pictures and video footage where children of objecting parents can be easily kept away from the cameras, but when it comes to collective events such as sports days, pageants and plays, things get complicated and images of some children would have to be somehow edited out.
“When it comes to school albums and photos to be published in newspapers, the internet or magazines, things are quite clear. If a parent says ‘no’ then you have to respect it and refrain from taking pictures of them inside the school. But there are some borderline issues that are still a bit problematic,” the spokesman said.
In the Mellieha school case, with all the school children participating in the concert, the law makes it impossible for the school to publish pictures of the entire choir, given that it includes a handful of children whose parents objected to their publication.
This has led the headmaster to remove all the children’s pictures from the school website.
At the same time, the law does not forbid people from taking pictures for their own personal use.
“But how could I be sure that nobody would post a picture on the internet?” Mr Abela said.
The education ministry spokesman acknowledged the problem, adding that digital images of children could provide material for abuse.
The headmaster is now meeting the Education Division’s data protection department in a bid to devise a standard policy that would apply for all schools, reconciling different points of view.
He says this should be a “comprehensive, practical” policy that takes account of the sensitivities surrounding the issue.
“We can, for example, send a standard letter to parents before such events informing them they can photograph or film children as long as they do it for personal use,” Mr Abela said. “It will increase red tape, but it’s a solution. And I hope we’ll have a solution in place before our next school concert, which is to be held very soon.”
karl@newsworksltd.com
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