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The department of basic education has applied for leave to appeal against a Limpopo High Court judgment that cleared 50 former matric pupils of examination irregularities and ordered the provincial education department to release their withheld results.
Chief director for national assessments and public examinations Priscilla Ogunbanjo confirmed the application during a media briefing on Sunday on the department’s state of readiness for the 2026 National Senior Certificate examinations.
“I want to indicate that the department did receive the court judgment. However, the details of that judgment have not been provided to the department yet. But the department has gone ahead and lodged an application for leave [to appeal]. They have lodged an application because we want to appeal the judgment,” said Ogunbanjo.
“There are a number of issues with regards to things that may not have been taken into consideration,” she said.
The Limpopo High Court ordered the Limpopo department of education to release the pupils’ statements of results within five days and issue their formal National Senior Certificates within 30 days.
The former pupils from Baphutheng Senior Secondary School had their 2024 matric results withheld after similarities in their answers to business studies paper 1 and economics paper 2 were treated as evidence of “group copying”.
They consistently denied cheating, maintaining that the similarities stemmed from teaching methods used at their under-resourced school.
Ogunbanjo said the Limpopo education MEC had initially been approached to reconsider the sanctions but upheld them, prompting the pupils to take the matter to court.
“The department still has information that we believe has not yet been completely considered and that is why the department has lodged this application already last week,” she said.
She said the department would await the court’s response before proceeding with a formal appeal.
“So we will wait to hear from the court and then a formal appeal will take place,” she said.
Department of basic education director-general Hubert Mathanzima Mweli said the pupils had argued that the similarities in their answers resulted from how they were taught at their disadvantaged school.
He said examination irregularity investigations involved multiple experts and a detailed analysis of pupils’ scripts before the department made a finding.
“As Mrs Ogunbanjo said, we want to study the judgment. But as she also indicated, it was very clear that we needed maybe to provide the court with more details around how we arrived at a decision to say a learner has copied,” he said.
Mweli said the department did not dismiss the pupils’ explanation that their answers reflected the teaching methods used at the school.
Experts also examined correlations in performance across subjects to establish whether the similarities could be explained by teaching methods or other factors.
The court’s ruling, handed down on October 1, set aside the disciplinary findings against the pupils as well as subsequent decisions by the former acting head of department and the MEC.
The court found that the provincial department had failed to establish that the pupils had committed examination irregularities. It also found that the process through which the findings were made was unlawful.
The pupils had spent almost two years waiting for their results, with the dispute placing their opportunities to pursue further studies and employment on hold.
The department’s application for leave to appeal means the legal dispute may continue while the court-ordered deadlines for releasing the pupils’ results and certificates remain central to the matter.
TimesLIVE
Modiegi Mashamaite
www.timeslive.co.za
