Since 2021, more than 1-million young assistants placed in about 21,000 schools across the country have helped take the pressure off overburdened teachers. Their presence has resulted in a marked improvement in literacy, numeracy and the general wellbeing of pupils, particularly in the foundation phase.
Briefing parliament’s basic education portfolio committee in June, Paddy Padayachee, the department of basic education (DBE) deputy director-general of planning, information and assessments, said: “Feedback received from over 95% of school management teams … indicated that the assistants had made a meaningful contribution to supporting the delivery of education within classrooms.”
Lala Maje, DBE director of initial teacher education, has been national project manager of the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI) since its inception. It began during the pandemic as part of the Presidential Employment Stimulus to create work for young people who had lost their jobs, and to support short-staffed state schools. It was so successful that it has been renewed, expanded and refined every year — except in 2026.
Maje’s disappointment at the hiatus in the programme is palpable. Funding for the first four phases of the BEEI came from the National Treasury, but in 2025 financial responsibility was transferred to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which allocated R4bn for phase 5. When it came to phase 6, the operationally challenged UIF refused to consider a funding proposal until, among other objections, an external audit that would take several months could be conducted.
Simply put, in Maje’s words: “They killed the programme.”
In the absence of funding for 2026, Maje says staff at some schools have taken it upon themselves to collect money to pay assistants, demonstrating how highly schools value the initiative.
Augmenting lessons
Maje says the real gem in the foundation phase has been the reading champions and curriculum assistants. “In 2025, we allocated more young people as reading champions to address the issue of literacy. In previous phases, a primary school might be sharing one or two reading champions across all classes, so in 2025 we made sure that each class had one assistant. We trained 55,000 young people and placed them in 14,000 primary schools to help with all aspects of reading.
“Over and above that, we placed curriculum assistants who focus on languages and mathematics in primary schools. These young people augment the teacher’s lessons by being present in the classroom, helping to decode things for the learners and to spot those who are struggling.”
Assistants are recruited from within a 5km radius of the school where they are employed, meaning the children are familiar with them. “They can relate to them because they come from the local community. They are easily able to ask for support and a listening ear.”
The assistants, she adds, have learnt to turn unused corners of classrooms into libraries, and to run trolley libraries in local communities. NGOs provide additional support. Some of the reading champions have started tutoring in their communities too.
“Read-aloud days became really vibrant. Inculcating a love of reading at that young age — the area of literacy which as a country we know we are struggling with — will reap so many fruits later in life. I think one of the biggest achievements of the BEEI is how it is helping to instil that love of reading and the ability to read at an early age.”
It has also sparked a calling in many assistants to pursue their studies and qualify as teachers. As Maje tells it, about 21,000 former assistants have been employed by the DBE, with 4,000 awarded bursaries just last year. “The love for teaching came while they were part of the BEEI programme. Now imagine the quality of teachers we will get.”
Apart from reading champions and curriculum assistants, young people assist with sporting activities, cleaning and maintenance, IT and admin, and psychosocial support. “They are given training so that they can help us identify learners who might have challenges at home; those who are beaten or don’t come to school, for example, anything that doesn’t look OK, and then be able to refer these learners quickly.”
Teachers who are particularly grateful for the programme are those at smaller and rural schools. At multigrade schools they can be teaching three classes at once, doing admin, managing sporting activities “and everything else in between”, Maje says.
“If you have young people helping, the teacher who is trying to teach maths, trying to differentiate it for three different grades in one classroom, now can have someone else in each group.”
Since 2021, according to official figures from the DBE, 200,000-300,000 assistants a year have been placed, earning a stipend as well as receiving training — provided by leveraging partnerships with NGOs, businesses and the sector education training authorities — that enabled many to subsequently pursue their studies, start their own businesses or find permanent jobs.
With more than 200,000 assistants placed each year, failure to renew the programme doesn’t help the unemployment rate, already at 32%. The loss was immediately felt in this year’s first-quarter labour force survey, as reported by News 24.
The knock-on effect, in terms of training and future employment opportunities lost, is harder to measure. “We give these young people accredited training,” says Maje. “Not necessarily only for basic education but for them to be employable or equipped to start their own businesses.”
The sports assistants, for example, receive training on how to referee or become a coach and are given the tools, support and kit to be able to start, say, a soccer club in a local community. The BEEI also offers training in skills such as plumbing, plastering, painting, landscaping and the like.
Taking it to Treasury
Maje is diplomatic about the DBE’s abortive relationship with the UIF. “We fought about some of the clauses in the financing agreement the UIF wanted, but because we wanted to implement the programme and not let it lapse, we ended up proceeding. The DBE is a public department but our turnaround time is very rapid, and in this, the organisational cultures differed … It’s not for me to say, but it seems short-sighted.”
There is hope that the BEEI will get the funding it needs, with Maje having presented a proposal to the Treasury in July asking for R24bn to be spread over three years.
Spencer Janari, the Treasury’s acting chief director of education and related departments, says there are clear benefits that set the BEEI apart.
“First is the exceptional reach of this programme in providing employment opportunities, mainly for youth, in virtually every corner of South Africa. Second, the number of beneficiaries for whom the BEEI has been able to provide employment opportunities. Third, the transferability of many of the skills gained by participants; this prepares them to participate in the broader economy after being in the programme. There is also emerging evidence of the value of classroom assistants.”
Funding decisions will depend on these criteria and available budget, says Janari. If it happens, the money will come through only in the next fiscal year.
Responding to queries about the UIF stepping in for phase 5, followed by this year’s hiatus, Bhavanesh Parbhoo, partnerships programme manager for the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the paymaster for the UIF funding, concedes that working across multiple entities such as the national and provincial education departments, the IDC and UIF is challenging. Despite this, he says the 2025 programme was “eventually successfully started, deployed and closed off in difficult timelines due to a joint willingness to see the programme through”.
However, Parbhoo says the IDC has not been involved in discussions regarding further UIF funding.
Despite the funding hiatus, the BEEI is pushing on, and NGO partners are stepping in to train those who will act as the leaders of next year’s cohort, meaning that one senior person at each primary school will mentor and manage all the assistants.
“The BEEI is growing every year and the partners that we have are amazing,” says Maje. Through augmentation, it could train new leaders “and make sure there is material for them, so that when the new ones come, they are ready”.
This story was produced by The Education Desk, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to addressing schooling challenges in South Africa. The Education Desk is supported by the Binding Constraints Lab, which assists multiple learning initiatives, including the BEEI programme.
