How Our Lessons Line Up With CAPS — and Where They Don't

CAPS — the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement — is what South African public schools follow. In the Foundation Phase, Grade R to Grade 3, the subjects are Home Language, First Additional Language, Mathematics and Life Skills, and Coding and Robotics is being introduced for the same grades from 2025.

Parents ask whether the app "is CAPS-aligned". The honest answer is that some parts line up closely, some partly, and some of CAPS the app does not attempt at all. We think a parent is better served by that map than by a badge.

Home Language. CAPS names three skills — Listening and Speaking, Reading and Phonics, and Writing and Handwriting — with Language Structure and Use woven through them. Our Setswana lessons are strongest on listening and speaking: every new word is read aloud and taught before it is practised. Stories support shared reading. A Setswana phonics sequence is written but waiting for a native speaker's review. Handwriting is not taught at all; it needs a pencil, and we would rather say so.

Mathematics. CAPS makes Numbers, Operations and Relationships the main focus of Grades R to 3, and our Numbers module does the same: counting, comparing, adding and taking away. Shapes and measuring are covered in part. Patterns, a CAPS content area of their own, are practised in the coding lessons. Data handling is touched only through sorting.

Life Skills. Personal and Social Well-being is where the app does most, through Health & Habits and Feelings & Friendships. Physical Education, Creative Arts and Beginning Knowledge get partial support from movement breaks, activities, Creative Studio and stories — but music, dance and drama, for example, are not covered.

Coding and Robotics. The coding lessons practise the computational-thinking core of the new subject — patterns, sequences, loops and conditions — without any typing. Robotics needs physical kits, and no app can stand in for those.

For children aged two to four, CAPS does not apply yet. The national guide for those years is the National Curriculum Framework for children from birth to four, built around six early learning and development areas: well-being, identity and belonging, communication, exploring mathematics, creativity, and knowledge and understanding of the world.

The full breakdown, skill by skill, is in the app under More → CAPS alignment, and it opens on the framework that fits your child's grade. It is our own mapping, not an official endorsement by the Department of Basic Education, and we update it whenever the content changes.