Tracking impact: The Basic Package of Support launches its first tracer study

South Africa continues to face a persistently high rate of young people who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET), with nearly one in three youth aged 15-24 disconnected from the education system and the labour market. This group faces intersecting challenges - including poverty, psycho-social vulnerabilities, limited service access, and disrupted school-to-work transitions - that deepen their exclusion from socio-economic participation. The Basic Package of Support (BPS) was designed as an integrated, youth-responsive intervention to tackle these various barriers, and to facilitate access to guidance, services, and opportunities that fit a young person’s needs and strengths.

BPS is a priority programme of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention and is implemented by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT and the Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA) at UJ.

 

Why a Tracer Study?

From the outset, BPS has focused on building connection, trust and integrated support for young people disconnected from education and the labour market, many of whom experience emotional ill-health. While routine monitoring and process evaluations have already generated valuable insights into programme delivery and its short-term outcomes, the tracer study marks a major step toward understanding the intervention’s longer-term effects.

The tracer study aims to follow up with young people after their initial engagement with the programme to explore changes in their educational, economic, and psycho-social trajectories. This longitudinal perspective is critical for assessing whether, and how, the BPS contributes to strengthening young people’s capabilities, and to facilitating more sustained engagement with services, education, training, or employment pathways.

 

Image: BPS Tracer fieldworker preparing for an interview in Atlantis. Credit: Kim Ingle. 

Importantly, BPS aligns with global frameworks that emphasise reducing young people’s ‘distance to the labour market’ — a multidimensional concept encompassing social, institutional, and capability-related barriers to participation. By offering personalised support and connection to a network of services, the BPS seeks to narrow these gaps and help young people build the knowledge, skills, assets, and agency needed to create more sustainable livelihoods.

 

Study Design and Participation

The tracer study employs a quasi-experimental design using a difference-in-differences approach to assess BPS impact. It compares outcomes for youth who opt into the coaching programme (study group) with those who do not (comparison group). The design spans two waves and two cohorts, allowing for a staggered rollout that balances operational capacity and methodological rigour. Baseline data is collected at intake, before coaching begins, with follow-up after six months to track changes in employment, education, well-being, and other outcomes.

Wave 1 data collection took place at the beginning of May, across all three of the flagship sites in Atlantis, Cato Manor, and Orange Farm. The response rate to the call for participation of a new cohort of young people in these communities exceeded all expectations, with above-planned turnout across all sites. This is a testament not only to the trust built between the BPS teams and the communities, but also to young people’s eagerness to find support and connection to opportunities, as demonstrated by these quotes from two young people enrolling at the BPS Orange Farm site:

What I can tell you is that I’ve been looking for work for a very long time […] It’s been three years being in the township, having completed my schooling. I saw this as an opportunity and thought, ‘let me join.’ I feel good about this thing because I think it’ll lift me up.

[…] I was struggling with applications... they told us to go to the Skills Centre as there’s something there […] So I said to myself, ‘let me rather just go because I’m struggling with applications and they will assist me.’

The BPS tracer study is implemented with support from the World Bank and through continued collaboration between SALDRU’s Youth research team, the SALDRU Survey & Data Hub, and the CSDA at UJ.

We expect the study to generate critical insights that can inform broader efforts to strengthen integrated social and employment services for youth, including ongoing engagements with the Department of Employment and Labour and the Presidency.

This study reaffirms our commitment to evidence-informed policy and practice — and to ensuring that young people’s needs and lived experiences remain central to South Africa’s response to the NEET crisis. We are grateful to the participants, BPS site teams, and research partners whose dedication makes this important work possible.

 

Image: BPS Tracer Fieldworker and Team Leader interviewing a respondent in Cato Manor. Image supplied by Lulama Mabaleka.