• A Pretoria High Court Judge has ruled that the 2025 Matric Results will be published via newspapers.
• The Information Regulator sent an urgent bid to the court asking it to block the publishing of results publicly.
• According to the judge, the Regulator was unable to prove that the appeal was urgent enough.

An urgent bid from the Information Regulator to block the publishing of the 2025 matric results in newspapers across South Africa on 14th January 2025 has been thrown out by the Pretoria High Court today.

As ordered by the court, the Regulator will now have to pay legal fees for the whole debacle and will have the urgent appeal stricken from the roll as it was unable to prove that the appeal was “urgent” at all.

Newspapers only publish the examination number of learners, and whether they passed or failed

The Information Regulator of South Africa (IRSA) argues that the Department of Basic Education’s plan to publish the results publically for the nearly 800 000 matrics who wrote exams last year is in breach of the country’s Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPIA).

“The [Information Regulator] found that the department was not compliant with section 11 of POPIA and was in breach of the conditions for the lawful processing of personal information by failing to obtain consent for the publication of matric results from the pupils or parents/guardians of pupils who sat for the 2023 national senior certificate examinations,” it said in November last year.

Meanwhile, the department says that the regulator has failed to demonstrate how the publishing of the results breaches section 11 of PoPIA.

The department has indicated in the past that publishing the results publically through newspapers increases the risk that learners who have performed poorly may be negatively affected by the action. To combat this it publishes the results online and via department offices before the newspapers are allowed to release the results.

“There is nothing before me to indicate any prejudice to learners,” said the Pretoria High Court Judge Ronel Tolmay today upon declaring the Information Regulator’s bid thrown out.

“No evidence of complaints by learners was placed before me,” they added. “The whole dispute at this point is seated on the contradicting views of the parties.”

She said that both parties must take into consideration what will be in the best interest of the learners.

“After all it is their rights we are dealing with,” she said, adding “The present manner of publishing has been done this way for three consecutive years. Why should this year be treated differently?”