Phase IV of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI) in the Basic Education Sector, implemented as the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI), commenced on 1 February 2023. The commencement of Phase IV is aligned with the beginning of the 2023 academic year and provides an opportunity for the youth to be in schools at a critical time and period when they are needed. This follows the successful implementation of Phase I – III, where more than 850,000 job opportunities were created. The target for Phase IV is planned for 255,000 job opportunities for youth across all nine provinces.

The 255,000 is split into two cohorts of approximately 150,000 and 105,000 youth, respectively: the first cohort starting on 1 February 2023, with the second cohort of 105,000 starting on 1 May 2023. The KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape Provinces will appoint single cohorts each, starting on 1 March and 1 February 2023, respectively.

The PYEI-BEEI leverages on the fact that there is a public school in every community in South Africa, which is an enabler for Government to provide job opportunities to the most vulnerable youth, who under normal circumstance might have to leave their communities to access opportunities. Inclusiveness is thus a key pillar of the initiative. In the same vein, schools have been encouraged to provide opportunities to youth living with disabilities, as well as women.  Schools have also been guided to prioritise youth living in communities where the schools are located. In this way, the youth do not have to spend money on transportation between their homes and the schools where they will be employed. 

The PYEI Phase IV continues to aim at providing youth with soft and hard skills required in the world of work. The soft skills that the youth will gain, will be immediate from day one, where schools will explain their ethos; and request youth to sign work contracts and job descriptions to manage their time in accordance with the school operating hours; communication skills as youth need to communicate with the school staff, as well as learners on a daily basis; reading and writing skills; professionalism, and self-confidence and self-esteem.

The focus for Phase IV is to provide support to educators to contribute towards improved learning outcomes. To this end, most of the youth will be working with educators in the classroom as Curriculum Assistants. Curriculum Assistants are not teachers and are not required to teach, as teaching and assessment remains the responsibility of the teacher. Reading Champions will assist learners with reading to ensure that they can read for meaning. The focus will be on the Foundation Phase to ensure that a solid foundation is built for future learning. E-Cadres will be required to assist with ICT integration in teaching and learning. In the past phases, schools have also used e-Cadres to provide support with administrative tasks. Other categories will be Care and Support Assistants, who will provide basic psychosocial support to learners; Sports and Enrichment Assistants, who will support the implementation of sports, arts and culture activities; and handymen and women, whose main responsibility will be to help with the upkeep and maintenance of school buildings. All work that will be done by the youth will be supervised by a mentor.

Provision of orientation and training to the youth will be prioritised. Information regarding the different training available can be accessed through the e-Cubed (E³) website https://learn.ecubed-dbe.org/presidential-youth-employment-initiative/. The Department and Provincial Education Departments will work with various partners to achieve this purpose. These include NEMISA, which will offer Digital Literacy; the University of Johannesburg, offering Artificial Intelligence in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; and Digify Africa, offering Online Safety. MTN and Anglo American have also pledged their support for the training of Curriculum Assistants and e-Cadres, respectively. The training of Reading Champions will be carried out by various non-governmental organisations, under the banner of the National Reading Coalition. Handymen will be provided with accredited training, ranging from painting, tiling, plastering to plumbing.

In Phase IV of the project, the Department will increase its effort to promote inclusive education awareness. Assistants will be required to undergo orientation on inclusive education to understand that learners living with disabilities should be treated on an equal basis with other young people in the school and within the communities in which they live. The second phase of the training will focus on training youth placed in special schools across the country, and the aim is to capacitate them to be able to provide the necessary additional support to enhance inclusion in school. The third phase of the training will focus on providing skills to assistants living with disabilities employed as part of the project. The Department is continuously looking for organisations to partner with to provide training to the youth, as well as exit pathways. The training is essential to upskill the youth, whilst providing various exit pathways to ensure that they can build on their work experiences and skills gained through the PYEI-BEEI. Pathways to other opportunities will also ensure that the youth remain meaningfully engaged and making a positive contribution to society.

The Department welcomes the youth to the PYEI-BEEI and encourages them to take full advantage of the opportunities that they will receive throughout their contract period. These job opportunities can catapult them into even greater things and allow them to develop as professionals.