Cape Town – The High Court in Pretoria has reportedly ruled that the Department of Basic Education should publish the matric results on media platforms.
Three organisations, including Afriforum, had approached the courts to reverse the decision made by the department last week to halt the long-standing practice that allowed the entire country to have access to the matric results of matriculants through newspapers and public digital platforms.
The National Senior Certificate results were set to be released on Thursday.
The department said the decision was made in response to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which went into effect in July of last year, the department said.
The Act sought to protect the rights of privacy when it came to the collection, retention, dissemination and use of personal information.
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But the high court heard that the decision was irrational and ill-informed.
According to News24, Judge Anthony Millar ordered that the department publish the results “as was the practice in previous years, concurrently with making available the results to the schools that had been attended by the learners”.
Millar said while the education department had set up an online platform for pupils to check their results, it was not enough.
“Not everyone has access to those resources, particularly those from more modest backgrounds and a single newspaper can be shared amongst many people in order to check their results,” the report quoted Millar as saying.
Millar also raised the issue of data costs when accessing the results on the department’s portal and even for those pupils who were not close to the schools where they wrote exams, EWN reported.
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The department had planned to only issue the results internally and through statements that were sent to schools, the report said.
AfriForum welcomed the court ruling.
“It is in the public interest that this information is shared on public platforms and that is one of the reasons why we brought this application. We are delighted that the court agreed with us in this argument,” IOL quoted Natasha Venter, Manager of Education Rights at AfriForum as saying.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
