Even if he doesn't know actual magic, he CAN teach you slight-of-hand and deception. As well as how to catch other's using slight-of-hand and deception to their advantage. The things stage magicians utilize can be adjusted to spy-work relatively easily.

And, hey, if you don't learn all that much, Justopea doesn't really want you to replace their soldiers.

Those kids never heard the phrase:
"Never underestimate a man that grew old in a job were people die young"

I sense hubris preceding nemesis for the orange one here.

The JSP aren't the brightest tools in the shed are they? Do they actually, really, recruit based on chin size?

The JSP execute stage magicians for the greater good.

Where better to hide actual magic? With stage trickery. If something looks impossible without actual magic... well, that just speaks to the skill of the stagecraft, right?

Magicians are journalists are similar in a lot of ways.

For example, they both disappear if they're good at their jobs.

@ Whispers of Sorrow: We can't see Randall's chin, he could have grown a beard to hide the fact that he effectively has no chin.

It occurs to me that this kind of education seems rather dangerous for Justopea - A spy (rather than just an asset) can't have a closed mind or afford not to question, and by necessity will be able to mislead and lie. That's enough of a problem for ordinary espionage programs, (there are a fair number of historical double agents, even if their lives are far more mundane than in spy fiction) where there's at least a little bit of filters, but these are unvetted children with plenty of reasons to hate the Empire or to be willing to suborn it.