Find out about your responsibilities as an Academic Personal Tutor, including guidance on how to arrange meetings with and monitor the progress of your students.
On this page
Learn about:
- what an Academic Personal Tutor does
- what you should and shouldn't do as an APT
- engaging with your students
- Academic Success Tutors
- evaluating the APT scheme.
What an Academic Personal Tutor does
An Academic Personal Tutor (APT) is an academic who has oversight of a student’s course, helping them make the most of their studies and working with them across modules.
As an APT, you are often the first point of contact for students who may have questions or need support in relation to their course. Based in a student’s subject area, you are a source of advice on academic matters and for signposting students to wider support.
You work proactively with all of your tutees, including those who might seem to be ‘doing fine’. You help students to make progress and encourage aspiration through academic attainment, building external experience (such as placements) and developing additional skills.
There are three key aspects to the Academic Personal Tutor role:
- Informational
APTs help students navigate the university’s processes and systems, including the academic requirements of their course.
The APT enables students to find and use relevant information, contacts and services at the University so that they can make the most of their course, often acting as the student’s first point of contact.
You can signpost your students to helpful resources on everything from academic support to health and wellbeing.
- Conceptual
You work with students to build an understanding of their education and career goals, explaining how the skills and knowledge developed in their degree will help them achieve their longer-term plans. You enable students to make informed decisions about their degree, such as module choices, and help students reflect on their current progress and opportunities available to them.
You help students to understand and evaluate their progress on their course, and feedback they have received through their modules. You also act as a guide to the academic cultures and environments of UK higher education, including those of specific subjects. This aspect of the role is particularly important in helping to address the ‘hidden’ curriculum and ‘imposter syndrome’ experienced by some students, especially those without personal or family support networks with experience of higher education.
- Relational
You are a friendly face and a supportive and inclusive point of contact for students. You play a key role in students building a relationship with the University, and establishing personal connections is part of this. You also help students forge connections with other students in their tutee group, through a mix of group and individual meetings (depending on the approach taken by your Faculty/School).
It is important to set appropriate expectations and boundaries in this role (the UKAT training module ‘Setting boundaries and expectations’ will help with this). Students should not expect you to respond out of working hours, but should expect responses within a reasonable timeframe (around 2-3 working days).
The APT is an academic role, and should focus on academic matters, while also acting as a supportive first-point-of-contact for pastoral issues and helping students to access appropriate support through signposting where necessary.
What you should and shouldn't do as an APT
Learn what is within and outside of your remit as an Academic Personal Tutor:
- APTs should
- contact your tutees at the beginning of each academic year and semester, welcoming new and returning students
- be prepared for meetings (for instance, checking students' grades and attendance on Sussex Direct)
- meet your tutees at least once a semester (in groups or one-to-one) and follow guidelines set by your School/Faculty
- meet with all tutees to discuss assessment feedback following results and feedback after Assessment Period 1 (January)
- show empathy and listen to students
- signpost students to relevant resources and services
- reflect on assessment results and attendance with students
- help students to build peer networks (for instance through group meetings)
- check in with students when concerns are raised about their attendance and engagement
- work with students to plan their academic and post-university goals
- expect to be referee for your tutees (when requested)
- find out tutees' reasonable adjustment requirements and implement these where relevant
- work with tutees to help them understand how their skills are transferrable to careers.
- APTs should not
- provide feedback on substantive drafts of contributory assessments (although you may provide feedback on assignment plans, outlines and/or limited extracts. Feedback on non-contributory, formative assessment is welcomed)
- provide mental health advice or counselling. You are a friendly face and helpful contact for students, but you are not a mental health counsellor
- liaise with students using your own phone or personal email address
- communicate with anyone external about the student, without the student’s express permission (unless you have concerns about a potential imminent risk to the student’s own or another’s safety, in which case contact Safeguarding).
Engaging with your students
You should arrange regular meetings with students, known as tutees. These can be a mix of group and individual meetings and can be in-person or online. Your Faculty/School may set an expected meeting schedule that should be followed.
These proactive meetings are particularly important for engaging with students that:
- may not reach out of their own accord despite needing academic support
- may benefit from guidance in making the most of their course and time at university, achieving better outcomes as a result, regardless of whether there is a challenge or ‘problem’ to resolve.
The number and timing of meetings is likely to be set by your School/Faculty, but a minimum expectation is for all APTs to have arranged meetings with all of their tutees at least once per semester (whether in a group or one-to-one format).
This should include meeting all tutees individually following assessment results and feedback release after Assessment Period 1.
Organising and recording meetings
There are numerous ways to arrange meetings with your students, and your School/Faculty may have recommended or required processes in place.
For example, you may want to arrange meetings with your students via Outlook Calendar. However, these meetings will not then appear on students’ Sussex Direct timetables.
Students are much more likely to engage with Academic Personal Tutoring when meetings appear on their Sussex Direct timetables (which are then also visible on the Sussex Mobile App). This can be done through ‘event booking’ on Sussex Direct.
However you arrange meetings, you should always provide students with an overview of what was discussed in the meeting, either after the meeting via the ‘record contact’ function on Sussex Direct or in the meeting itself.
- How to organise meetings on Sussex Direct
1. Go to the ‘Teaching’ drop-down at the top of the page, then select ‘Timetable’ and ‘Event List’.
2. On the ‘Event List’ page, select ‘New Event’. This will show you all of the student groups you are attached to. From these, select ‘Academic Personal Tutees’ by clicking on ‘Show’. You will then be able to select individual tutees or all tutees. Once you have selected the students you wish to invite, click ‘Next‘.
3. The ‘Event Setup’ page allows you to create the event, including setting a day and time. You can also specify whether students are given a range of times and dates to choose from or are ‘auto-accepted’ onto an event with a fixed date and time. If you are organising an online meeting you can add a Microsoft Teams or Zoom link. Tick ‘Email Invitees’ so that students receive the invitation by email. Then click ‘Next’.
4. On the final page, you will see a ‘Clash-Check’ which shows whether the time and date of your meeting clashes with classes or other engagements for your student. Once you've established there is no clash and you are happy with the arrangements for the meeting, click ‘Create Event’.
The meeting will then appear on your student's Sussex Direct timetable, and your teaching timetable. You can also record meeting attendance on Sussex Direct.
- How to record meetings on Sussex Direct
If you have set up meetings with your tutee through Sussex Direct, you can also record their attendance and add notes about the meeting (which are also visible to students) on Sussex Direct.
To record attendance for a group meeting, go to the ‘Teaching’ tab, click on ‘Event List’, and select the relevant meeting. You will then see the button ‘Event Bookings and Attendance’, which will allow you to record attendance.
To record attendance and notes for an individual meeting, or for an invidual student, you can go to the ‘Teaching tab’ on Sussex Direct and select ‘Academic Personal Tutees’. Then click ‘Record Contact’ next to the individual student to add notes about the meeting or the student (this will be visible to the student).
Monitoring student attendance and engagement
Outside of regular meetings with tutees, you should also review your students’ progress, such as attendance and assessment submissions via Sussex Direct.
Where concerns regarding tutees’ attendance or engagement are raised with you, for instance through the Faculty/School’s regular attendance monitoring process, you should reach out to tutees to check whether any support is needed and to invite them to discuss barriers to attendance or engagement that they may be facing.
Accessing student attendance and assessment information
Access tutee attendance and assessment information on Sussex Direct via the following steps:
- Under the ‘Teaching’ tab, click on ‘Academic Personal Tutees’.
- From the list of tutees, bring up your tutee record on Sussex Direct.
- Click ‘View my study pages’.
- Click ‘Module progress and feedback’. This will bring up details on your tutee’s assessments and attendance, which can be filtered by term and year.
Under ‘Assessment’ you can see your tutee’s marks and how many assessments they have submitted for each module. By clicking the overall percentage, you will be able to see a breakdown by each assessment for the module.
For attendance, you can see classes attended under the ‘Attendance column. This will give you an idea how well the student is engaging.
Contacting students proactively
In addition to meetings, you should proactively contact your tutees via email at regular intervals. These messages serve, for instance, to introduce and familiarise students with their APT, help to check-in on students, and provide relevant information about or invitations to meetings.
You should contact your tutees to introduce yourself and welcome them back at the beginning of each semester, and then regularly throughout the year (two or three times per semester).
Breaks in the teaching year, especially over the Winter holiday and first Assessment Period, can be challenging times of the year, particularly for new students. It is important to reach out to tutees during the first Assessment Period or just after as part of regular contact.
The 1-9 check-in approach
The 1-9 check-in technique is a light-touch way of finding out how your tutees are doing, and is used in several parts of the University.
You may wish to use this approach as a way of proactively contacting students regularly. This would meet the expectation of regular contact via email during the year. You could send an introductory/welcome back email and then use 1-9 check-ins as your standard approach.
The 1-9 check-in approach is being piloted at scale in some parts of the University more fully as a requirement (in place of other regular email contact) in 2025/26.
The 1-9 check-in involves APTs e-mailing all of their tutees at regular intervals during, with tutees responding with a simple number between 1-9. This number corresponds to a scale of how students are currently feeling about their studies. APTs can then respond to tutees that reply with a low score.
This provides a very simple, accessible way for students to engage with their APT and for the APT to quickly check on their tutee group. There are six surveys per academic year, in weeks 3, 6 and 9 in the Autumn term and weeks 3, 6 and 9 in the Spring term.
Where tutees respond with a rating of 4 or below, you should email your student to invite them to a meeting and ask if they are able to provide more information on any concerns or challenges that they are experiencing.
Depending on the situation, you may be able to provide academic advice and signpost the student to supportat the University.
Students at heightened academic risk, who are reporting low scores in the 1-9 check in, may benefit from an Academic Success Tutor
You can adapt the following template when reaching out to students:
- The 1-9 check-in exemplar email
Dear tutees,
I hope this finds you well. Please let me (your Academic Personal Tutor) know how you are getting on at the moment by replying to this email with a number between 1-9.
Please select the number that most accurately represents how you feel at the moment:
9: feeling excellent – things could not be going better
8: feeling really good and managing really well
7: feeling good and managing pretty well
6: managing fairly well
5: feeling just about OK
4: finding things a little tough – I could do with a little help
3: finding things quite tough – I am struggling quite a bit
2: feeling bad – I am really struggling
1: feeling terrible – I am on the verge of withdrawing from my course.
If you gave a rating of 4 or below I will get in touch and we can talk about the best way to support you. If you gave a rating of 5 or more but would like me to get in touch, please let me know.'
Psychology only: the 1-9 check-ins will be set up as Canvas ungraded quizzes, with different quizzesallocated to different students and their Personal Tutors via the ‘groups’ function in the Psychology Personal Tutoring Canvas sites. The emails will include the link to their 1-9 survey, and the emails can be personalised to represent the voice of the personal tutor. This will provide a degree of automation, which Psychology is trialing from Autumn 2025, with a view to making this available across the University.
Reasonable adjustments
You should check your Academic Personal Tutee list for any students that have either a green flag or orange flag.
Students with an orange flag have enhanced adjustments. You can find additional documents about these students’ requirements on Sussex Direct. Read more information about how to support disabled students
You must check Reasonable Adjustment information and implement any reasonable adjustments required.
If your tutees tell you they are having issues with the suitability of their adjustments, signpost them to the Disability Advice team. If tutees have any concerns regarding how agreed adjustments are being implemented by academic staff, contact your Faculty or School lead for student experience or your Head of Department.
Accessing other tutee information and data
‘We are working towards making more information and data available for Academic Personal Tutors, to help make tutoring as effective as possible and respond to the context of tutee groups.
Student Success Survey: all students are now asked to complete a Student Success Survey at the beginning of each year of study, which focuses on students’ self-reported confidence in a range of areas relating to their academic experience. We are aiming to make this data available to Academic Personal Tutors at the tutoring group level. This gives APTs a broad overview of their tutoring group.
Career Readiness Survey: this long-standing survey, which all students complete as part of registration, provides a snapshot of student confidence in relation to careers. We are aiming to make this data available to Academic Personal Tutors at the tutoring group level. This gives APTs a sense of how their tutor group is reflecting on their career readiness.
Academic Success Tutors
If your students are struggling with their studies and are at heightened academic risk, they may benefit from the additional support of an Academic Success Tutor (AST).
- The Academic Success Tutor role
The Academic Success Tutor (AST) role is designed to be more specialised in academic tutoring, and has two key aims:
1. Providing capacity, in addition to the Academic Personal Tutor (APT), to support students that are at heightened academic risk, based on evidence from their studies to date.
2. Developing specialist expertise in an aspect of student experience that will support student success, and that can be disseminated as good practice to Academic Personal Tutors within and across faculties.
The AST can be thought of as a point of ‘escalation’ for Academic Personal Tutors. In some cases, a tutee may benefit from additional academic support beyond the reasonable capacity of the APT. This may be particularly the case where a tutee, based on evidence from their studies to date, is at heightened risk of academic failure and/or withdrawal. In such cases, the APT can engage with an AST in their Faculty to request additional academic support for their tutee. This increases the circle of support around the student and is done in partnership between the APT, AST and student.
The Academic Success Tutor primarily works with students one a one-to-one basis, for a limited period of time, with a focus on stabilising academic progress. This would typically focus on developing study plans with the student. The student would continue to engage with the Academic Personal Tutor during this time, as usual.
The Academic Success Tutor is also expected to be a source of knowledge and expertise in relation to academic personal tutoring and student experience, and is likely to specialised in an aspect of this (for example international student experience or transitions into Higher Education). They are able to develop and disseminate best practice in academic personal tutoring more widely, and build institutional expertise (especially in support of student groups who are at heightened risk to their student outcomes).
- What kind of evidence might suggest involving an AST would be useful?
Evidence of academic risk will be context-based. Indicatively, this may include:
- students with very low levels of attendance and/or engagement continuing after contact form the APT (for instance, contact with an AST may be included as part of escalation processes within attendance and engagement monitoring)
- multiple assessments below a pass mark, or non-submissions, leading to the likelihood of high levels of sits/resits
- student disclosure of a significant disruption to their studies, which will likely require significantly increased levels of academic support
- students undertaking repeat years or semesters are likely to be at increased academic risk, so may be asked to engage with an AST as part of their return to studies. It may be beneficial for ASTs to organise peer groups/meetings for students repeating studies, to help establish peer support networks.
Evaluating the APT scheme
The APT Framework will be reviewed at the end of the 2025/26 academic year to identify what is working well and what can be improved. This will include quantitative and qualitative feedback through, for example:
- student attendance and engagement with Academic Personal Tutoring
- student feedback, including through student representatives
- staff feedback, though an APT survey in Spring/Summer 2025/26.
We are also developing ways of monitoring expected outcomes for students including:
- greater student confidence in careers and employability
- supporting Acess and Participation Plan (APP) objectives, such as closing ethnicity-based awarding gaps and awarding gaps for students that have been eligible for Free School Meals
- improving continuation and completion rates for all students
- supporting improvements in international student awarding gaps
- supporting improvements in student experience, as measured through relevant questions in the NSS
- supporting improvements in staff experience, as measured through the staff survey
- increasing the number of staff with professional recognition through UKAT training.