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Good practice Imported

Malta's National Guidelines on the Ethical Use of AI and Data in Teaching and Learning

Malta · Valletta · See the Malta profile · See the Valletta profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 46% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Malta's Ministry for Education published national guidelines on ethical AI and data use in schools in March 2026, grounded in the EU AI Act and GDPR; MCAST built them into a five-area staff policy on compliance, protection, integrity and transparency.

March 2026
National guidelines published
5 policy areas
MCAST staff policy areas

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation (Malta)
Period
Since March 2026
Region (NUTS)
MT00
Keywords
education policy, AI ethics, data protection, vocational education

Context

Malta's Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation, through its Ethics Department, published national guidelines in March 2026 on the ethical use of AI and data in teaching and learning, giving Maltese educators a reference point built on the risk-based approach of the EU AI Act (2024) and GDPR.

Objectives

The guidelines aim to give schools and colleges a common national reference for when and how to use AI tools with students, complementing a revised school Ethics curriculum that now covers online misinformation, algorithmic bias and digital manipulation.

Activities

On 25 March 2026 the Ethics Department presented the accompanying Ethics curriculum to Malta's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Affairs, alongside the University of Malta-linked "wE-Thrive" research project studying how adolescents understand digital trust in AI interactions. MCAST, Malta's vocational and further-education college, translated the national guidance into its own five-area staff policy covering EU AI Act alignment, data protection, academic integrity, AI literacy and transparency, permitting AI use in coursework provided students disclose it.

Conclusions

Implementation has been uneven across institutions: MCAST built an explicit disclosure-based policy, while other institutions have leaned more heavily on detection and control rather than the national guidance's framework.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Not disclosed; primarily a policy/guidance document produced by the Ministry's Ethics Department, plus institution-level policy translation (e.g. MCAST) at existing staff capacity.
Time to results
Short (< 1 year) — Published March 2026; presented to Parliament's IT and AI Committee on 25 March 2026.
Staffing & skills
Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation (Malta) — Ethics Department, MCAST (Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology), University of Malta (wE-Thrive research project)

Conditions for success

  • Explicit grounding in EU AI Act and GDPR gives a shared legal reference point
  • Institution-level translation into concrete policy (as MCAST did) turns national guidance into actionable rules

Common failure modes

  • Implementation is uneven across institutions; some rely on detection/control rather than the disclosure-based approach the guidance supports

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Digital Europe Programme Erasmus+

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Data sources

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