Information Regulator takes matric results fight to the SCA after two court losses

The Information Regulator has gone straight to the Supreme Court of Appeal in its long fight to stop newspapers publishing matric results, after the Gauteng High Court refused it permission to appeal in June.

As CapeTown ETC reported on 18 September, the regulator is now asking the country’s second highest court for leave to continue a challenge it has already lost twice. The question at the centre of it is narrow and consequential: when a matric result is printed next to an examination number instead of a name, has the learner’s personal information been protected?

The Department of Basic Education says yes. The regulator says no, and the Supreme Court of Appeal will settle it.

How the practice changed

Before the Protection of Personal Information Act came fully into effect, newspapers published matriculants’ names alongside their results. That changed. The department moved to examination numbers and the annual results lists have run that way since.

The department’s argument, put in the litigation, is that a reader holding a newspaper cannot reasonably work out which learner owns which number. The regulator’s answer is that the numbers are issued sequentially. Learners who sat the same examinations, it argues, could use that sequence to match a result to a person.

That disagreement is the whole case.

What the courts have said so far

In 2024 the regulator issued an enforcement notice directing that results not be published in newspapers and instead be released through schools and the department’s secure SMS platform. The department did not comply. It kept publishing, using examination numbers.

In December 2025 a full bench of the Gauteng High Court ruled that publication by examination number gives learners sufficient privacy protection, and set aside the regulator’s notices against the department.

The regulator applied for leave to appeal. In June 2026 the High Court refused it, finding no reasonable prospect of success and no other compelling reason for an appeal. The regulator has now bypassed the High Court and petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal directly.

AfriForum is opposing that petition. Its argument is that the High Court struck a workable balance between privacy and the public interest, and that the principle reaches further than the matric lists. If a code is enough to identify a person, the organisation argues, then research and other published work built on coded data is exposed too.

Why it matters beyond the newspapers

The case is not really about matric results. It is about how POPIA applies when information is published with identifiers rather than names, and that question runs through a great deal of what South African institutions release.

For the class of 2026 and the classes after it, the practical effect is simpler. The results will be published in the familiar format while the litigation continues, and the Supreme Court of Appeal will decide whether that format survives.

For parents and learners, the department’s own channels remain the reliable route, the school and the SMS platform, both of which the regulator has never objected to.

The regulator’s petition now sits with the Supreme Court of Appeal, which will decide whether to grant leave. If it does, the appeal will be heard and the publication practice will stand or fall on the outcome.

Source: CapeTown ETC, Matric results battle heads to Supreme Court of Appeal.