The curriculum changed and parents can't keep up

You want to help your child with their homework. It's a simple desire. Your parents helped you. Their parents helped them. Sitting at the kitchen table, working through a problem together, that's what families do. That's what you're supposed to do.

So your child brings you their Maths homework. You look at it. You were good at Maths. You passed matric. You've been using numbers your whole adult life. This should be fine.

But something's wrong. The method looks unfamiliar. The way the question is phrased doesn't match how you learned it. You start explaining, using the approach that worked for you, and your child cuts you off.

"That's not how we're supposed to do it."

You try a different angle. Your child gets frustrated. You get frustrated. Eventually someone says "forget it" and walks away. The homework doesn't get done. Or it gets done badly. Or your child figures it out alone while you sit in the other room feeling useless.

This scene plays out in homes across South Africa every night. Parents who want to help. Parents who feel like they should be able to help. Parents who remember being helped. But the curriculum they learned is gone. CAPS isn't what you studied. The methods have changed. The content has moved. The terminology is different. You're not failing your child. The ground shifted and no one told you.

What actually changed

Let's be clear about what happened. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement, known as CAPS, was introduced in 2012. It replaced the National Curriculum Statement, which had replaced Curriculum 2005, which had replaced the apartheid-era curriculum. In less than twenty years, South African education went through multiple complete overhauls.

If you finished school before 2012, you didn't learn under CAPS. If you finished before 2006, you didn't even learn under the NCS. The curriculum your child is studying is genuinely, structurally different from what you experienced.

CAPS changed how subjects are organised. Content that used to be taught in Grade 10 might now appear in Grade 11, or the other way around. Topics were added. Topics were removed. The sequence changed.

CAPS changed terminology. The words used to describe concepts, the labels for processes, the vocabulary expected in exam answers. Even if the underlying idea is the same, it might be called something different now. A parent explaining a concept using old terminology can accidentally confuse a child who's been taught to use specific CAPS terms.

CAPS changed methods. This is especially true in Mathematics. The approaches and techniques taught under CAPS don't always match how parents learned to solve problems. You might get the right answer using your method, but if your child writes it that way in an exam, they might not get full marks. Method matters. Working matters. And the expected working has changed.

CAPS changed assessment. How learners are tested, what kinds of questions appear, how marks are allocated, what structure answers should follow. A parent who remembers essay-style questions might not understand why their child needs to answer in bullet points, or vice versa.

This isn't your imagination. It isn't that you've forgotten what you learned. The curriculum is objectively different from what you studied. You're trying to help with something you were never taught.

The guilt trap

Here's where it gets painful. Most parents carry an unspoken belief: I should be able to help my child with school. It feels like a basic parental duty. When you can't do it, something feels broken.

You watch your child struggle and you feel guilty. You hear about other parents helping with projects, explaining concepts, checking homework, and you wonder what's wrong with you. Are you not smart enough? Did you forget everything? Have you failed as a parent?

None of these things are true. But the guilt is real and it's heavy.

The previous generation of parents had an advantage they probably didn't recognise. When they helped their children with homework, they were helping with the same curriculum they'd learned themselves. The content was familiar. The methods were the same. They weren't teaching something new. They were remembering something old.

You don't have that advantage. You're being asked to help your child with material you never studied, using methods you were never taught, in a structure you've never seen. It would be like someone asking you to proofread a document written in a language you don't speak. Your willingness isn't the problem. Your access is.

Some parents try to hide this. They bluff. They say "work it out yourself" or "ask your teacher" because they don't want to admit they don't know. The child interprets this as disinterest or dismissal. The parent feels ashamed. No one wins.

Other parents try to force their old methods onto the new curriculum. They insist their way is right because it worked for them. The child gets confused, caught between what their parent says and what their teacher says. Conflict builds. Trust breaks down.

None of this is necessary. But it keeps happening because parents don't realise the curriculum genuinely changed, and they blame themselves for not keeping up with something they were never informed about.

Why "just Google it" doesn't work

Okay, you think. I'll just learn it. I'll look it up online, figure out how CAPS does it, and then help my child. Reasonable plan.

You search for help with a Grade 10 Maths topic. The first results are American. They use different terminology, different methods, different everything. Not helpful.

You add "South Africa" to the search. You find a few resources, but they're inconsistent. One site explains it one way. Another explains it differently. Neither matches exactly what's in your child's textbook. You're not sure which to trust.

You try YouTube. There are videos, but half of them are from other countries. The South African ones vary wildly in quality. Some are helpful. Some are confusing. Some are outdated. You spend an hour watching videos and end up more uncertain than when you started.

You ask in a parents' WhatsApp group. Five different people give five different answers. Someone shares a link that's broken. Someone else says their child's teacher does it differently. The conversation devolves into complaints about education in general.

By now you've spent two hours trying to figure out a single homework problem. You're frustrated. Your child has moved on and done it themselves, probably incorrectly. You give up and hope the teacher will sort it out.

This is the reality of trying to self-educate on CAPS as a parent. The information is scattered, inconsistent, and mixed with international content that doesn't apply. Unless you're willing to dedicate serious time to systematically learning the curriculum, which most working parents cannot do, you're stuck. Willing to help but unable to.

What parents can actually do

Here's the shift that makes this easier. You don't need to become an expert on CAPS. You don't need to relearn high school. Your job isn't to be your child's teacher. Your job is to be their parent.

That means providing environment. A space to study. A routine that protects study time. A home where education is valued and prioritised. These things matter enormously, and they don't require you to understand quadratic equations.

That means providing support. Encouragement when things are hard. Patience when marks are disappointing. Belief that your child can improve. The emotional scaffolding of education is as important as the academic content, and only you can provide it.

That means asking the right questions. Not "do you need help with the content?" but "do you have everything you need to study?" Not "let me explain this to you" but "what resources are you using?"

And critically, it means providing tools. If you can't be the expert, make sure your child has access to expertise. The right study guides. The right practice questions. The right explanations, given the right way, aligned to what CAPS actually requires.

This is where your role as a parent becomes powerful again. You might not be able to explain the content. But you can make sure your child has access to something that can. You can remove the barriers. You can provide the resources. You can ensure that when your child sits down to study, they have what they need to succeed.

The help you wish you could give

Here's what you want to be able to do. When your child is stuck at 9pm on a Tuesday, you want them to have access to a clear, patient explanation. When they don't understand a concept, you want someone to break it down step by step. When they're preparing for an exam, you want them to have the right content, structured the right way, using the right terminology.

You want to give them what your parents gave you. But the curriculum changed, and you can't.

This is why we built Paperman.

Paperman is the help you wish you could give, available whenever your child needs it. It understands CAPS. It uses the terminology that appears in textbooks and exams. It explains concepts the way South African learners need them explained. It's patient. It's available at 10pm. It doesn't get frustrated. It doesn't guess.

You don't need to feel guilty anymore for not knowing the curriculum. You need to make sure your child has access to something that does. That's your job as a parent. Not being the expert. Making sure the expert is in the room.

The curriculum changed. You didn't fail. You just need different tools now.

We built those tools.