While matrics across the country have started with their final exams, lawyers are battling it out in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, as to whether their results may once again be published in the media early next year.

This has been an ongoing issue since 2022, and while several judges have up to now given the green light for the publication, the matter has never been fully ventilated. The dispute over the public publication of matric results began in 2022 when the Department of Basic Education (DBE) tried to prohibit it.

At the time, the judge agreed with AfriForum and the other parties involved that the publication of the results was in the public interest and that the use of examination numbers instead of the names of the matriculants provided sufficient protection for their privacy.

At the end of last year, the Information Regulator (IR) tried to prevent the DBE from publishing the 2024 matric results. The IR’s application to obtain an interdict against it, however, failed in January when the court ruled in favour of the publication of the results.

The DBE maintains that this order is still valid, and it argues that it has no other choice but to oppose the IR’s directive to withhold publication.  However, the case in January only dealt with the interdict and not the merits of the case. In this week’s legal challenge, three applications in this regard have been joined. This includes whether the IR’s directive that the results may not be published is valid or not.

The fact that the DBE published last year’s matric results resulted in the IR slapping it with a R5 million administrative fine. This is one of the applications under the spotlight as the department wants the court to overturn this sanction.

The Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia) came under the spotlight on Monday during the arguments of Advocate Marius Oosthuizen SC, acting for the DBE. He told a full bench – three judges – that each matric candidate is issued with a confidential exam number.

The matric results are published under this exam number, and the candidate itself is not identified, other than through the specific number. “Our case is that by using the exam number, we are not using the personal information of the candidate,” Oosthuizen said.

The IR maintained that this is still against Popia, as a candidate sitting next to another in the exams may notice the other’s number and then check that candidate’s results. But Oosthuizen said this is absurd, as this is mere speculation.

He also argued that in the age of transparency, the media should be allowed to report on the results of the matric exams. He pointed out that the results will remain the property of the DBE and will only be released to inform the candidates of their marks. He argued that the principles of the Act are flexible, and it all comes down to reasonableness.

It was meanwhile argued on behalf of the IR that regarding the 2025 matric examination results, the DBE was ordered to obtain the consent of learners to publish their results in newspapers and also to design a system in terms of which examination numbers are not issued sequentially. This was, however, not done.

“In addition, if the DBE does not design a new system, it must ensure that the results are published in the newspapers in a manner that will not make it possible for the learners in the same school to identify other learners and their results,” the IR argued. It added that the DBE remains obligated to release matric results directly to the learners, and it is not obliged to publish them in newspapers.

zelda.venter@inl.co.za

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