Adult education and training (AET) was always a neglected part of South African education. In the mid-1990s, the South African government sought to change this by introducing a number of policies that prepared the way for adult basic education (ABET) to become part of the formal educational system, and to attain its official status as a formally recognised qualification pathway. In 2013, the government's redistributive response to this pathway's past marginalisation was to incorporate AET in the national qualifications framework (NQF) as a system parallel to basic education for children. These policies introduced a shift in the function of AET from providing opportunities for the acquisition of literacy, especially for ethnically marginalised adults, to offering a formal qualification and the opportunity for out-of-school youth to improve their work opportunities. This changed status of AET created a second-chance educational opportunity for out-of-school youth to complete their general education as well as an opportunity to further their education. An interesting phenomenon is that, whereas these youthful, non-traditional AET students had a troubled history with formal schooling, they seem to be successful in AET. Based on her narrative interviews with youthful, non-traditional AET learners, the author of this article looks at how they navigate second-chance education and investigates what facilitates these learners' educational success.