Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements or CAPS. It is a revision of the current National Curriculum Statement (NCS). With the introduction of CAPS, every subject in each grade will have a single, comprehensive and concise policy document that will provide details on what teachers need to teach and assess on a grade-by-grade and subject-by-subject basis. This curriculum review has the aim of lessening the administrative load on teachers, and ensuring that there is clear guidance and consistency for teachers when teaching.

In 2014, there were 12 655 436 learners in ordinary public and independent schools (hereinafter collectively referred to as ordinary schools) in South Africa, who attended 25 741 schools and were served by 425 090 educators (see Tables 2 and 3). This data is from the survey conducted on the 10th school day. Approximately 99.9% of functional ordinary schools submitted the survey forms. No imputation was done on the data. The figures in this article are preliminary, and the final figures will be published in the more comprehensive Education Statistics in South Africa 2014.

Table 2: Number of learners, educators and schools in the ordinary school sector, by province, in 2014

Table 2 shows the number of ordinary public and independent schools, learners and educators there were in 2014. It further
shows that the highest and lowest percentages of learners, educators and schools in the ordinary school sector occurred in
KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape, respectively. Majority of independent schools were situated in Gauteng (651) followed
by KwaZulu-Natal with 236 schools.

Table 3: Number of learners, educators and schools in the ordinary school sector, by province, from 2012 to 2014

From the figures reflected in Table 3 it can be deduced that, from 2012 to 2014, the number of learners increased by 1.8%
nationally, while the number of educators and schools decreased by 0.01% and 0.3% respectively. The Eastern Cape was the
only province that experienced a drop in learner and educator numbers.

At what age must my child enter school? What if I can't afford the school fees? Are teachers allowed to smack my child? What if my child has special educational needs? Can I educate my child at home? We give you the answers, and more, to frequent questions about South Africa's schooling system.