Regulator goes to the SCA in new bid to stop publication of matric results

After losing three bids in the high court to stop the publication of matric results in newspapers, the Information Regulator has turned to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) to stop the years-old tradition.

The case is a landmark one for the regulator, lodged in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia).

Popia was signed into law in 2013 to promote the protection of personal information processed by private and public bodies and to ensure promotion of access to information.

Should the regulator win the case at the SCA and the matter not be appealed in the Constitutional Court, matric results will cease to be published nationally using learners’ exam numbers.

The regulator, an independent body, has had three unlucky runs in convincing the high court in Pretoria that the publishing of matric results, even without names or ID numbers of matriculants, breaches privacy laws and should be stopped.

Appealing against the high court majority judgment by judge Omphemetse Mooki, information regulator commissioner Mfana Gwala argues that the department of basic education has a legal obligation to release matric results directly to learners, rather than publish them in newspapers for all to see.

The department of basic education “is obliged to release matric results directly to the learners themselves and not to any unauthorised person, but it is not obliged to publish them in newspapers”, Gwala contends.

“There is no person who can claim to have a right to be informed of any learner’s matric exam results through newspapers.”

The department has no legal basis to justify the publication of matric results in newspapers, Gwala argues, because it has no contract with newspaper outlets.

“There is no contract in terms of which the [department] is obliged to publish matric exam results in local newspapers.”

There is no person who can claim to have a right to be informed of any learner’s matric exam results through newspapers.

The genesis of the biggest legal showdown by the regulator against the department and minister Siviwe Gwarube was a November 2023 assessment by the regulator that probed whether the publication of the matric results in newspapers was compliant with Popia.

After the assessment the regulator issued a notice to the department that it must not publish the 2024 matric results in newspapers and must make the results available to the learners using methods compliant with Popia, such as each learner obtaining their results from the school or using a secure SMS platform.

“Matric exam results are personal information of the learners,” Gwala maintains.