The Pretoria High Court on Tuesday granted an urgent application brought forward by matric student Anlé Spies to reverse an earlier decision by the department of basic education (DBE) to not publish the 2021 NSC results in the media.
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Last Tuesday the department announced that it would no longer be publishing the matric results through the newspaper in order to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
“All learners will be required to obtain their statements of results from their respective schools. In this way, every learner’s personal information with regards to the outcomes of the 2021 NSC exams will be protected,” said basic education minister Angie Motshekga.
The main argument put forward by Media was that the new arrangement made it incredibly difficult to access her matric results, since she went to school in Pretoria but lives in Gqeberha.
As reported by the Daily Dispatch, Anlé Spies – speaking through her legal representation, Hurter Spies Inc. – told reporters that it was critical students like her received their results as quickly as possible.
“This is unlike previous years. In the past matric results (except for last year) used to be announced shortly after Christmas or in early January, leaving three to four weeks before students had to report for their studies at the respective campuses of tertiary institutions they intended visiting,” Spies said.
“I can just imagine that a huge number of the more than one-million matriculants who wrote the matric exams last year are in a similar position to me in that they had moved or relocated to addresses far away from the schools they attended when they sat for the matric exams.”
Following the court’s ruling, matric results will be published in the Daily Dispatch on Friday.
