Tom’s flagging system helps tutors to identify students who need support in engaging with their studies and to reach out to them in a friendly and non-judgemental way. Many of the flagged students face serious problems and are pleased to be contacted.

Teaching area

Student engagement and attendance

Course

Politics and Politics Joint Honours undergraduate students

Description

I took a lead on the traffic light student flagging system implemented in the Department of Politics in the 2023/24 academic year as a method of identifying and responding to students in need of support in engaging with their studies. It is designed to work in tandem with existing Academic Personal Tutor (APT) arrangements. The implementation of the flagging system was designed to capture the significant proportion of students who might never go to see their APT or who may drop off their studies. It aims to understand the reasons for the lack of engagement and create personalised support plans that help students to get back on track. The flagging system also identifies pastoral issues students face and helps to solve them or signposts the students to other services.

Flagging criteria

Seminar tutors are best placed to get to know students on a personal level. In the Politics department, it is common for seminar tutors to mark their students’ scripts. After marking, tutors are asked to un-anonymise scripts, compare essay scores against each student’s attendance and to assess how that student performed in that seminar across the semester. The system is most effective when every seminar tutor in each semester engages with it. I ran it for the fourth time in spring 2026, and all staff participated, including doctoral tutors.

Contextualising essay scores is important to capture students most in need. A student may score between 55 per cent and 58 per cent yet be a perfectly engaged student – this score reflects where they are at academically. Similarly, a student may not be engaged, attend very few classes, but manage to get a similar score. A seminar tutor is uniquely placed to note any concerns about students. Going over their groups, they can ‘flag’ students as amber or red based on the following general criteria:

RED – The student’s essay has not been submitted, or is very poor, or there is reason to believe it has been bought or heavily influenced/written by Chat GPT. The student has barely attended seminars. When they have, they have been disengaged or seem visibly distressed or anxious.

AMBER – The essay requires significant improvement. It is not clear that much effort has gone into the essay. The student also has a below average attendance, and the tutor has concerns about their engagement in class.

Meeting with students

Lists of flagged students are sent to a representative in the department (in this case, me), who then collates the data from the entire student cohort. Where a student has at least two amber flags, or just one red flag, the representative sends an email to this student, inviting them to a mandatory progression review meeting.

Crucially, the tone of this email must be one of care and concern for the student, and to assure them that they have not done anything wrong. The aim is to find out what is going on and to work out what can be done to help. You can see my email template below.

In the Politics department trials of this system in Autumn and Spring 2023/24, 31 students were flagged in each semester and invited to meetings in Week 2. Despite these students failing to engage in their courses and, in many cases, failing to submit assignments, 24 students in each semester were quick to arrange a 30-minute one-on-one meeting, conducted in person, on Zoom or on the phone. In Autumn 2025, 29 were flagged and 18 had a meeting. In Spring 2026, 30 students were flagged and 25 had a meeting. Since starting the flagging system, staff have become used to providing more information to give context behind the flags. Meetings are more productive, and the system works better.

Students are generally happy that they have been identified as a student of concern. Many are very open about their struggles and reasons behind their lack of engagement and seem desperate to correct this. While meetings are confidential, students are informed that if information is divulged that is concerning for their physical and mental health, other university bodies will be called in to assist. I collect data and report on the issues that students face, student complaints about module delivery, and the importance of action plans tailored to each student.

Outcomes

Academic skills and student support

These are the main issues that students reported impacted on their attendance and performance in 2023/24, in order of frequency. The same issues came up in 2024/25 and 2025/26.

• Mental health challenges
• Severe financial difficulties
• Family bereavements, illnesses and acting as primary caregivers to family members
• Housing issues
• New academic expectations
• Anxiety attending seminars
• Lack of flexibility in their timetables.

In Autumn and Spring 2023/24, of the 48 meetings, 23 students were given clear action plans, with mandatory meetings booked in with me later in the semester to check progress. This plan was warmly received, and 17 of the 23 students attended the follow-up meetings.

Of the students who are flagged, around 70 to 80 per cent are not reflagged the next time, and since the system began, no students so far have been continuously flagged. While this is positive, it is not a problem if students are re-flagged. It is fanciful to presume that one meeting will fix all issues students face in one go. Some students are heavily burdened for a range of reasons, and the purpose of the system is to assist students throughout their university journey.

The system cannot by itself fix these problems, but it can help students to navigate them.

Comments

Politics students are familiar with the flagging process now. At first, they were nervous about it, but they are less apprehensive now. In Politics focus groups, students have said that they happy to be flagged so they can talk to me about what’s going on with them.

These are the following open comments we received from the 2024/25 National Student Survey:

Teachers appear to care about students and work to support.

The staff are kind towards mental health issues.

The system works for the Politics department because seminar tutors mark their students’ work, and student numbers are small enough that it is manageable to hold these meetings. In larger departments, APTs could flag students on the grounds of attendance and seminar engagement, cross-referencing this information with assessment grades. If students have also failed at least one assessment with no exceptional circumstances already identified, the APT could invite the student to meet with them. If tutors are convinced that an assessment has been produced purely with AI, this could also be a factor in flagging students.

I am happy to consult or assist with any colleagues interested in running this system or an adapted system within their departments.

This is my email template:

Links

Read my post about the traffic light student flagging system on the LaPSe of Reason blog