Built by a Teacher Who’s Been There.
ALI Ed Hub is a South African EdTech company with a simple mission: give teachers their time back. Our first product, EduBuddy, was built by a Foundation Phase teacher who lived the problem — and decided to fix it.
Founder Story
I’m Paula Brill, and before any of this was a company, I was a teacher.
I taught Foundation Phase — Grade 2 at Oatlands Prep in Makhanda, the year children go from sounding out letters to reading whole stories. It’s one of the most important years in a child’s school life, and I loved it. What I didn’t love was everything that pulled me away from it: the lesson plans, the activities, the assessments, the reports — hours of admin, every week, mostly long after the children had gone home.
I watched good teachers burn out under that load. I felt it myself. And I kept thinking the same thing: none of this should take this long, and none of it should stand between a teacher and her class.
EduBuddy is the tool I wished I’d had in my own classroom. It’s built on real CAPS teaching — not generic AI — because I’ve sat where these teachers sit.
Paula holds a BEd in Foundation Phase teaching from Rhodes University (with distinction) and is registered with SACE.
More Than Just a Name
The “ALI” in ALI Ed Hub is Alison.
Alison Dugmore gave me my first teaching job, so on paper she was my first boss. She was so much more than that. She mentored me, and she carried me through some of the hardest moments of my life. She had a way of bringing everything back to what actually matters: love the children, make the classroom a safe place for them, and that will always be enough.
We lost Alison, unexpectedly, in 2025. When it came time to name this company, naming it after her was the only thing that felt right. Everything we build carries her belief — that education, done with love, changes lives.
Where Classroom Meets Code
Paula and Trevor go back a long way — both are from the Eastern Cape, and both studied at Rhodes University in Makhanda. Paula brought the classroom; Trevor, a software developer raised by a teacher, brought the code. What began as a conversation between two people who’d grown up in the same part of the world became a shared vision: build something that genuinely makes a teacher’s day lighter. Today they pair deep classroom insight with the technical skill to build it properly — South African EdTech, built by South Africans, from the Eastern Cape.
Starting Where It’s Needed Most
We’re focused. Rather than spreading thin across many tools, we’re building one product properly first: EduBuddy, an AI teaching assistant that plans CAPS-aligned lessons, activities and assessments — and helps teachers write report and parent comments in minutes. It’s our wedge into a bigger vision — a connected ecosystem that one day supports parents, learners and whole schools, with ParentPal, ClassCoach and SchoolAide on the roadmap.
EduBuddy
AI teaching assistant for lesson planning, activities and assessments.
ParentPal
Guidance for parents to support learning at home.
SchoolAide
Simplified school management and communication. .
ClassCoach
Personalised learning support for students.
Teaching made lighter.
Learning made brighter.
We want to reduce the pressure on teachers so they can do the work that drew them to the classroom in the first place: teaching.
A future where teachers are supported.
A future where teachers are supported, not buried in admin — and where good technology quietly does the heavy lifting so educators can focus on children.