Back in June the Department of Education (DBE) announced that it would be opening up jobs to the unemployed youth of the country on the SAYouth platform and now it has provided a timeline of what applicants can expect –

• Applications: 26th September – 16th October;
• Interviews: November – December 2022;
• Contracts start: February 2023 onwards.

We’re a bit surprised by the massive lead time here as announcing the openings of jobs in June that will only start in February 2023 is quite the wait. As the programme is designed to help those with little job experience, waiting a full eight months is rather strange.

That aside the latest announcement of these dates doesn’t provide information about what jobs will be available. In the original announcement specific mention is made of Education Assistants (EA) and General School Assistants (GSA).

This programme is part of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative which, according to the DBE, helped secure work for more than 320 000 people across around 23 000 public schools in 2021.

“The EAs were expected to provide support in classroom preparation before lessons, support teachers in the classroom during lessons and manage learners after lessons. According to the Department of Basic Education, the EAs have been trained to work with teachers in Home Languages (HL), First Additional Language (FAL), Mathematics and BCM subjects. The EAs made a significant contribution in helping teachers to address the identifiable learning gaps in various grades,” the department writes.

“The GSAs were assisting with learner screening and sanitizing in the morning before school starts and during school hours. The other GSA were placed as eCadres, they assisted teacher in integrating ICT in classrooms as well as assisted in the admin of [South African School Administration and Management System] SASAMS.”

All these acronyms aside those thinking of applying can prepare ahead of 26th September when the applications open by registering on the SAYouth portal which is data free.