Chairperson, I think that is a very useful question, because I think we need to clarify things once and for all around where we are going, so that we don't have comebacks. Hon members, what informs a curriculum? Let us talk about the curriculum of the country and not even use labels because this OBE has become a red herring. Each time we want to talk about curriculum people raise OBE. We are saying that a curriculum is informed by principles. The principles and values which are in your Constitution and as a country we had framed these as outcomes, these are the principles of nonracialism, nonsexism, and peace. These are the principles which were even in your initial curriculum statement that you called OBE. You can't throw away those principles as they continue to inform our curriculum.
What I said last week was that we are within that framework of outcomes or principles that we had termed as outcomes. What we are improving on is resources, reduction of work, and changing the assessment systems. It is important for us that at all times we just talk about the curriculum and not give it labels, because it is when we label that we create confusion as to whether we still have OBE or not.
What we are saying is that we are improving your assessments and resources, so that it could inform the principle. We said we are rewriting the syllabi and therefore providing textbooks has nothing to do with principles. The textbook is going to support your syllabi or the contents of your curriculum. I think it is quite useful for us to have a common understanding of what we are talking about, because we keep on having people asking us if this is OBE or not. It is neither here nor there.
We are talking about a new curriculum for the country and these workbooks are meant to support that curriculum. When I spoke about the review, I said some of the weaknesses that were picked up by that review committee were poor resources in support of the curriculum. These textbooks are meant to address that problem of resources in support of the curriculum. I never said we will not teach children the history of this country. It remains there as it was always there in the old curriculum and it is going to continue to be there so that we teach our children the history of this country.
In the past, we never stopped teaching kids how to multiply. We did it in the old curriculum and we are introducing resources to empower that exercise. The knowledge does not change - we are giving resources to the knowledge part of the curriculum. [Applause.]