The Department of Basic Education says it has successfully implemented the Presidential Youth Employment Stimulus which commenced in December 2020, creating over 300,000 jobs at schools across the country.<\/p>\n
The department said that the programme also helped save over 25,950 School Governing Body (SGB) funded posts in public and government subsidised independent schools.<\/p>\n
These posts came under threat due to schools experiencing financial distress, as a result of parents not being able to pay school fees, because of the economic devastation of Covid-19, it said.<\/p>\n
“The Basic Education sector created employment opportunities for a total of 319,091 education and general education assistants between the ages of 18 and 35 in the country.<\/p>\n
“The programme, whose aim was to use direct public investment to create opportunities for employment and to provide support to workers negatively impacted by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, comes to an end on 31 March 2021.”<\/p>\n
The department said that more than 868,000 applications were received from young people when the initiative was started.<\/p>\n
Of the 300,000 successful candidates, 200,000 were education assistants and 100,000 were general school assistants.<\/p>\n
Education Assistants will support teachers in the classroom and provide extra support to learners. General school assistants will help schools to comply with Covid-19 protocols while ensuring that teaching and learning take place in a safe, secure and hygienic environment.<\/p>\n
Recruitment primarily took place at the community level, with schools required to prioritise candidates living near the school.<\/p>\n
The DBE said it partnered with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator to digitise the recruitment processes across the provinces.<\/p>\n
“The Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator helped with the recruitment processes in seven of the nine provinces, through the SAYouth.mobi site.<\/p>\n
“An added benefit of using the SAYouth.mobi site is that it is able to match job seekers to additional employment opportunities, in line with their interests and qualifications,” it said.<\/p>\n