Our work

Open Textbooks

Making accessible educational resources

We believe, quite simply, that everyone should have access to the basic resources that they need to achieve their education.

In pursuit of making education accessible, Siyavula has produced book titles spanning Mathematics and Science subjects from Grades 4-12. These are high-quality, curriculum-aligned Open Educational Resources.

When producing an educational resource, we believe in the collective power and diverse insight obtained from a large group of volunteers and contributors, from different backgrounds and contexts, from South Africa and around the world.

What has this enabled?

Free access

Multiple formats for accessibility

Contextualisation of content and sharing

Cost savings

Open collaboration and transparency

Longevity of content

Open catalogue

Download our textbooks in different formats. The various folders contain the relevant learner book(s) and teacher's guide(s), in English and Afrikaans. Refer to the different licences for each download and below for explanations of the licensing. Find out more here about the sponsorships and partnerships with others that made the production of each of the open textbooks possible.

  • Gr 4 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences and Technology

    • PDF_A (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDF_B (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 5 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences and Technology

    • PDF_A (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDF_B (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 6 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences and Technology

    • PDF_A (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDF_B (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 7 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences

    • PDF_A (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDF_B (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 8 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 9 (A & B)

    Natural Sciences

    • PDF_A (CC-BY-ND)


    • PDF_B (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 10

    Physical Sciences

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 11

    Physical Sciences

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 12

    Physical Sciences

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 10

    Life Sciences

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY)


  • Gr 10

    Mathematics

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 11

    Mathematics

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 12

    Mathematics

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


  • Gr 10

    Mathematical literacy

    • PDFs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBs (CC-BY-ND)


    • ePUBS (CC-BY)


OUR BOOK LICENSING

CC-BY-ND

You are allowed and encouraged to freely copy these versions. You can photocopy, print and distribute them as often as you like. You can download them onto your mobile phone, iPad, PC or flash drive. You can burn them to CD, email them around or upload them to your website. The only restriction is that you cannot adapt or change these versions of the textbooks, their content or covers in any way as they contain the relevant Siyavula brands, the sponsorship logos and are endorsed by the Department of Basic Education. For more information, visit Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.

CC-BY

These unbranded versions of the same content are available for you to share, adapt, transform, modify or build upon in any way, with the only requirement being to give appropriate credit to Siyavula. For more information, visit Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

Open collaboration

Open content to open processes

At Siyavula, community is at the heart of our content development processes, which are open, transparent, iterative and collaborative. This has been the case ever since the first versions of the Free High School Science Texts were written by volunteers. Over the years, we have tried and tested different models for collaborative development, continually reflecting on the ideal process that draws on the strengths of the community and feeds into our work.

Each of our open textbooks has been developed collaboratively by a large group of contributors, including volunteers from South Africa and internationally, paid contributors and our in-house team. Each book project was managed by the Content Coordinator (a subject specialist responsible for the content, curriculum, workshop design, authoring and editing) and the Community Coordinator. Our collaborative development process has varied and evolved but has always involved physical workshops (also known as hackathons or book sprints) and online collaboration for review and translation. As in open source software development, we believe in the mantra "release early and release often".

The benefits of collaborative OER development are resounding

  • A diverse group of people from different contexts and backgrounds ensures our content is more relevant to the needs of South Africa than if it was only produced by a select few.
  • An inclusive, iterative, transparent process brings multiple stakeholders together, including government officials, curriculum experts, teachers, postgraduate students, parents and learners, allowing for broader impact in South Africa, and beyond.
  • The content is extensively reviewed, often resulting in online debate and discussion, which is open to anyone.
  • The large number of contributors has been noted as an indicator of high quality for educators.
  • Volunteer educators taking part in the processes learn about open education and we have seen they are then more likely to adopt and advocate for the use of OER in their schools and networks.
  • The exercise promotes skills and professional development amongst those involved.
  • The processes provide a space for people to give back meaningfully to education in South Africa, knowing that their contribution will have an impact.
  • We start to build a community around the open textbook, which facilitates adoption, continued revision and updates. This is a living resource.
  • We have seen how our processes have been instigators for other communities of open practice to seed and flourish.

"Reuse, Remix, Revise, Redistribute"