Teachers

What are the Notifications bell and the Important alerts for?

Written by the TestFLE team. Updated 13 November 2026

In short

The “Notifications” bell lists the events in your classes and the students whose level is dropping, and the “Important alerts” column on the Home page adds the live test incidents. These are signals to check in class, not a judgement on a student.

Who this is for, and what you need first

Who this is for: Teachers who follow classes, and school administrators for their own classes.
What you need first: A teacher account with at least one class.

The steps

Find the “Notifications” bell in the sidebar. A red badge with a number gives the number of unread notifications; a red dot with no number points to level drops you have not opened yet.
Click “Notifications”. The window shows “Level drops” first, then “Events”.
To mark a row as read, click “Mark as read”. For a whole group (a class, a day), click “Mark all as read”.
To remove an event from the list, click “Delete” on its row. To remove in one go all those you have already read, click “Clear read notifications”, at the top of the “Events” section.
When several students are grouped on one row, click “Show students” to list them, then “Collapse” to close the list.
To open a class session, click “Open the session” next to its row.
For the incidents of a test in progress, look at the “Important alerts” column, on the right of the Home page.

Notifications window with the events grouped by class and by day, unread rows marked with a red dot

What the window contains

The “Level drops” section lists the students whose result has dropped. The “Events” section lists what the platform has recorded in your classes: a session started or ended, a test finished, an account activated. If your school has the Practice option, it also lists the practice tests opened or finished and the copies submitted. A submitted copy is reported to the teachers of the student’s class and to the teacher who assigned the prompt, even if they do not teach that class.

Events are sorted by class, then by day, the most recent first. Unread notifications come before the others, within the limit of the hundred most recent. The window updates about every minute, and when you come back to the tab.

Deleting and clearing notifications

“Delete” removes a notification for good: no button brings it back. The facts it announced stay in the results, the copies and the sessions. “Clear read notifications” only appears if at least one notification is read; it removes all the read ones and keeps the unread ones, then a line says how many have gone, for example “3 read notifications cleared.”.

TestFLE also tidies up by itself, every night: a read notification is removed one week after it was read, and an unread notification stays until you read it, within the limit of sixty days.

Important alerts column of the Home page with the list of students who need the teacher’s attention

Going further

Understanding the settings and special cases

What do you read in the “Events” section?

Each row carries the time of the event. The most common sentences are the following.

“The {class} session has started.”: the class session has just opened.
“{class} session ended: {finished} of {total}, {n} absent.”: the session is over, with the number of students who finished and the number of absent students.
“{student} finished the test ({reason}).”: a student has finished their test. The reason it stopped is given in brackets.
“{student} activated their account.”: the student has done their first connection. A password reset, followed by a new first connection, does not produce this row.
“{student} submitted a paper for "{prompt}".”: a copy has arrived. The “new version” badge points to a copy submitted again after a revision.
“The practice test "{bank}" is open to {class}.”: a Practice bank has just been opened to the class.

In a class session, the end of a student’s test does not produce a row in their name: only the “{class} session ended…” row sums up the session. The “{student} finished the test” rows therefore concern students who take the test through an individual opening. When several students are in that case, the row becomes “{n} students of {class} finished the test”, and “Show students” details each one.

The “Open the session” link opens the session page: its live follow-up while it is running, its report once it has ended. How do I read a session report? describes it.

What do level drops mean?

A student enters the list as soon as their global result is lower than at the previous test. TestFLE compares the global scores of their last two tests and shows the gap as a percentage, for example a drop of 8%. The gap concerns the global score, not the step. The biggest drops come first.

A drop is a lead to check in class, not a judgement: the screen says nothing about its cause. It applies no threshold, and a slight drop is enough to appear in the list. The bell’s red dot with no number disappears as soon as you open the window. The same students appear in “Important alerts”, under the text “N students need attention”. If there are none, the screen says “No students need attention.”

What does the “Important alerts” column show?

At the top of the column, the “Live test incidents” panel lists the incidents of students who are taking the test right now. The screen updates it every five seconds as long as the tab is visible. When there is nothing to deal with, it says “No pending incident.” Two kinds of incidents appear there:

“{student} left the test page, please check”: the student has left the page. Once the student is back, the text gives how long they were away. In a test opened “In person”, the student’s test is blocked: it stays stopped until you click “Unsuspend”. When at least two students of a class are blocked, an “Unsuspend all” button, followed by the class and the number of students, restarts them together. In a test opened “Remote”, nothing is blocked: the student resumes on their own and the exit is counted in the session follow-up.
“{student} needs help”: the student has called their teacher. The “Acknowledge” button removes the call from the list and lets the student call again.

Each incident row also offers “Cancel test”, which opens a confirmation window. It warns that the action is irreversible: the work already done is not graded, the test does not count anywhere, and the student will be able to start a new test. What should I do if a student is blocked during the test? covers these actions in detail.

What about emails?

TestFLE sends no email for these notifications. Everything stays in the application: remember to open the bell, or to keep the Home page open during a session.