Education Minister Evarist Bartolo was unable to give Parliament information on the number of students attending courses at the Barts Medical School in Gozo or how many were given scholarships paid by the government.

When asked by the Opposition’s spokesman on Gozo affairs, Chris Said, to say how many students were following the two courses that started last September, Mr Bartolo said he was precluded from giving such information.

Declaring it “confidential information”, Mr Bartolo insisted that since Barts Medical School was a private educational institution, the National Commission for Further and Higher Education was not in a position to give such information.

However, contacted at their head office in London, a spokesman for Barts did not have any problem in giving such information to this newspaper.

“At the moment, we have 40 students attending courses at the Gozo facility. While half of them are students originating from the UK, four other students come from other European Union Member States while the rest come from countries around the globe,” he said.

He would not say how many are fee-paying students or whether the scholarships were financed through Maltese public funds.

“We are currently unable to provide specific information. The university offers a range of scholarships for qualified students across all our courses, including the Maltese programme,” the spokesman said.

Sources close to Barts told the Times of Malta more than half the students in Gozo were actually not paying for their tuition fees as they had won scholarships.

Most of the scholarships were backed by funds allocated to Vitals Global Healthcare through Malta Enterprise, they added.

“Vitals – at least until it went under – was sponsoring many students at Barts. The money was coming from the over €50 million allocation given to Vitals over the last two years,” the sources said.

Other scholarships were supported via arrangements made by Malta Enterprise as part of the deal to lure Barts to open a campus in Malta, they continued.

Barts originally planned to open their medical school in Gozo in 2016 but had to postpone by a year as work on their state-of-the art campus was delayed.

Barts were allocated part of the Gozo sixth form to be able to start courses last September.

ivan.camilleri@timesofmalta.com