How to Spot Students at Risk Before It Is Too Late

The signs are in the record

A student rarely fails overnight. First the attendance slips, then the marks follow. The trouble is that the pattern hides across pages of a register — unless the app surfaces it.

SMS watches two signals for you: how often a student attends, and how many days in a row they have been away.

Open the at-risk list

Go to Analytics and look at the low-attendance table. It lists students whose attendance has fallen below the level you set in Settings, with their percentage and their longest run of consecutive absences.

The visual reports page has the same list with a chart of the lowest ten, so you can see at a glance who needs attention first.

1. 1Open Analytics from the sidebar.
2. 2Look at the low-attendance table.
3. 3Sort by percentage or by consecutive absences to pick who to check first.

Read the numbers correctly

Attendance percentage counts recorded periods only. Excused periods are left out, so an approved leave never counts against a student. A student with no recorded periods shows no percentage — not zero.

Consecutive absences count unbroken runs. Three days away in a row means something different from three scattered days, and SMS shows the run, not just the total.

What to do next

Open the student's own page. Their Attendance tab shows the timeline — which days, which periods — and their Test Results tab shows whether marks are slipping too. That is the full picture before you speak to the student or a parent.

Set your own thresholds in Settings under Risk thresholds. The level that means 'at risk' for your classes is your call, not the app's.

• ✓Check the student's timeline before judging a single number.
• ✓Compare attendance with marks — both falling together is the strongest signal.
• ✓Talk early. A short conversation in week three beats a rescue in week twelve.

Keep the habit

A quick look at the at-risk list once a week catches most problems while they are still small. The list is always there — you do not need to build it.

For the full walkthrough, see the User guide. For getting the marks in first, see From Paper Tests to Digital Records.