By: Ofentse Seanego
The matriculants of 2021 will not get to see their exam numbers published in newspapers come January 21, as has been a traditional practise, the Department of Basic Education navigates the POPI Act.
The department this week announced that the matric results would no longer be published on media platforms. It further issued media houses with a notice, stating that “the usual practice of publishing the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results on public platforms (media platforms) will not occur for 2021”.
The department said the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) was the reason and that the dissemination of pupils’ personal information would be in contravention of POPIA. Spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said matric results would be available at schools as in previous years.
“As was also the practice in previous years, all learners will be required to obtain their statement of results from the schools they attended. In this way, every learner’s personal information with regards to the outcome of their National Senior Certificate exam will be protected,” he said.
Some sectors have welcomed the move with others questioning it. Yolanda Yamani from FleishmanHillard said before 2014, matric results were published displaying each learner’s name. To protect the identities of learners, from 2014 onwards, matric results were published displaying only the learner’s identity number or examination number without displaying the learner’s name.
Yamani said it had been argued that a learner’s examination number would not constitute personal information. By removing the learner’s name, the public would not know to which individual learner the marks in question relate.
“For purposes of POPIA, personal information is information relating to an identifiable, living natural person, and where applicable, an existing juristic person. It expressly includes an individual’s educational history, an individual’s name if it appears with other personal information, an individual’s identity number and any other identifying symbol, such as an examination number. POPIA regulates the processing (i.e. dissemination, sharing, transferring etc.) of personal information,” Yamani said.
She added that POPIA would not, however, apply to the processing of personal information in circumstances where the personal information has been sufficiently de-identified. This means that the information that identifies an individual or can be used, manipulated or linked by reasonably foreseeable methods to identify the individual has been deleted.
“The question is then whether one can use the learner’s examination number to identify the learner? For certain individuals, the answer will be ‘yes’. The department, the respective schools and potentially, some family members of the learner concerned would be able to link the examination number to the particular learner. Members of the public, who are unrelated to the department, the school concerned or the learner, would, however, in all likelihood, not be able to link the examination number to the learner concerned,” she said.
She maintains that while the National Schools Act, together with the National Protocol on Assessment, prohibits the withholding of results for any reason whatsoever, there does not appear to be a legal obligation on the department to make the matric results publicly available.
“Further, whilst there may be an argument that the publication of the matric results may be in the legitimate interest of the learners who are unable to attend their schools to obtain their results, this may only apply to a small portion of the learners concerned. In the circumstances, the department is likely to require the consent of each learner to make their matric results publicly available,” she said.
