This article explores the framing of youth and adult education (YAE) policies in two Latin American countries, namely Chile and Peru. It takes their participation in PIAAC as a contextual starting point to unravel the problems explicitly or implicitly framed in YAE policies and their root causes, as understood by key policy stakeholders. We found that policy documents specifically addressing YAE are not only scarce, but also the existing ones tend to be either too broad or too narrow in relation to how YAE is understood. The results suggest that in both countries, there exists a widespread disregard for YAE, a limited perspective on the field, and a generalised lack of funding for YAE. Under these conditions, participation in a study like PIAAC is primarily motivated by considerations unrelated to education, thus resulting in a very limited impact on YAE policy.