Teachers
Why don’t I have the buttons to open a test?
Written by the TestFLE team.
In short
Without the right to open tests, you see the state of your students and your classes, but no longer the buttons that schedule, open or close a test. Your school’s administrator can grant it to you in your details.
Who this is for, and what you need first
- Who this is for
- Teachers whose menu for a student or a class does not offer to open a test.
- What you need first
- An activated teacher account, with at least one class.
- A way to reach your school’s administrator, the only person who can give this right.
The steps
- On the Home page, in the “My students” or “My classes” tab, click the three dots on a row.
- Read the menu. If you find the sentence “Your institution has not granted you test opening. You can see the state, not change it.”, you do not have the right to open tests.
- Ask your school’s administrator to tick “Can open and close tests” in your details. They find them in their administration area, under the “Teachers” entry, in the window titled “Teacher details”.
- Once the box is ticked and the details are saved, reload your page. The opening buttons come back in the menus.
This right is a box in the teacher’s details, not a school option. It is ticked by default, and the administrator can then untick it for each teacher. A teacher who is also a school administrator always has the right, whatever the box says.
What you can do in the meantime
You can still read and follow. The “Access” column of “My students” and the badge of each class still show the state. The “Calendar” displays your sessions, and its “Follow the session” and “View the session report” buttons are still there. The “Live” entry stays open at the same times, along with its “Project the test instructions” button. The menus also let you reset a student’s password, declare a student a non-reader, get the PDF documents and open a student’s sheet.
Three incident actions remain possible, from the Home page only: “Unsuspend”, “Acknowledge” and “Cancel test”. They are in the “Important alerts” column on the right, under “Live test incidents”. See the “Incidents on the Home page” section below.
Going further
Understanding the settings and special cases
What disappears without the right
All the actions that open, schedule, close or stop a test are removed. They are removed from every place where the screen offers them:
- A student’s menu, on the Home page. No more “Mark absent” or “Present after all”, “Close their openings”, “Open a one-time attempt…” or “Open unlimited…”. The whole “Test in progress” section disappears, with “Unfreeze the suspended attempt” and “Cancel the running test”.
- A class’s menu. No more “Schedule a class session…”, “Change the times”, “Cancel the session” or “Close now”. The menu’s “Follow the session” and “View the session report” entries disappear too (the Calendar still offers them). The “Question bank” section disappears: you can no longer change the class’s bank with “Change the bank…”. What remains is “Show this class’s students”.
- The bar for ticked students, under the “My students” table, which no longer appears at all.
- The Calendar. No more “Schedule a class session…” or “Open an attempt…” at the top of the screen. On each session, no more “Change the times”, and no closing or cancelling of the session.
- The Live screen and a session’s page. The students’ rows are displayed, without any button. “Mark absent”, “Present after all”, “Unsuspend”, “Acknowledge”, “Cancel test” and “End the test” are no longer offered there.
Do not confuse “Cancel the session”, which deletes a class session that has not yet started, with “Cancel test”, which stops a student’s test in progress.
What the server refuses too
The right is not just a matter of display: the server refuses the changes of a teacher who does not have it. It does so for scheduling, opening an attempt, changing, closing or cancelling a session, marking a student absent or present, changing a class’s bank and ending a student’s test.
A refusal normally never shows, since the buttons are hidden. It can appear, however, if the administrator unticks the box while your page is open: the buttons are then still on the screen. The action fails with this message (“Your institution has not granted you the right to open and close tests.”), under the title “The action did not go through.” in a menu, or in the window itself when scheduling. Then reload the page: the server applies the change from the next request, without signing you out.
Incidents on the Home page
The “Live test incidents” panel keeps three buttons, even without the right to open tests, for the students in your classes:
- “Unsuspend”, on a student whose test is blocked after they left the page. When two or more students of the same class are blocked, an “Unsuspend all” button followed by the name of the class unblocks them in one go.
- “Acknowledge”, on a call for help. The call stays displayed until you click it.
- “Cancel test”, on either of these rows. A window asks for confirmation and warns that the action is irreversible: the work already done is not graded, the test does not count anywhere, and the student can start a new test.
These actions only exist in this panel. The Live screen, a session’s page and a student’s menu do not offer them to a teacher without the right, and “End the test” stays out of reach. A test in progress that has triggered no incident therefore cannot be cancelled by this teacher.
If you are an administrator and your Home page is empty
A teacher who is also an administrator is never blocked by this right. If their Home page shows no student and no class, the cause lies elsewhere: the Home page of the teacher area only displays the classes you belong to. The school’s classes are managed from the administration area. The article What will I find in my teacher area? covers this case in detail.
Where to read more
For the actions themselves, see scheduling a session and opening the test to a single student. For incidents, see what to do if a student is blocked and cancelling or ending a student’s test.
Related articles
- How do I schedule a test session for a class?A class session opens the TestFLE placement test to a whole class, one attempt per student, at set times. You schedule it from the “My classes” tab or from the “Calendar”, choosing the day, the times, the mode and the setting.
- How do I open the test to a single student?From the three dots on a student’s row in “My students”, choose “Open a one-time attempt…” or “Open unlimited…”, then the start, the end, the mode and the setting. For a student who takes the test at home, choose “Remote”: the window offers “In person” by default.
- What should I do if a student is blocked during the test?In person, a student who leaves the test page has their test blocked, and only the teacher can unblock it. Click “Unsuspend” in the incidents on the home page, in the live view or in the student’s menu; without the right to open tests, only the home page offers it.
- How do I cancel or end a student’s test in progress?Cancelling a student’s test in progress produces no result and keeps their attempt; ending it with at least fifteen answers publishes the test and uses up the attempt, but the global level may be missing. “Cancel test” is in the live view, on the home page and in the student’s menu; “End the test”, in the live view and on the session page.