Absenteeism and attrition pose serious challenges in government-funded adult ESL programmes, inhibiting success rates, jeopardising funding, and potentially threatening programmes' ability to continue to offer services. Because adult learners who enrol in programmes typically juggle numerous priorities and responsibilities beyond schooling, their engagement and attendance must be maintained. The research reported here aimed to identify key institutional factors that negatively affect adult Hispanic students' attendance patterns in ESL classes. Specifically, it focussed on determining which aspects of the overall programme structure and which classroom factors had the greatest negative impact on students' attendance patterns and engagement. Affective factors (e.g. social sensitivity, incongruence), ineffective or incomplete teaching methods, students' perceptions of slow or no progress, and assessment issues were the most prominent factors that emerged from the analyses.