Why students stop coming, and which weeks it happens in

Find out which week you lose people in

Attendance by session number, per cohort, is the whole diagnostic and most providers have never plotted it. The shape tells you which problem you have: an early cliff is a placement and expectations problem, a mid-course cliff is a curriculum or difficulty problem, and a steady bleed is a scheduling problem. Buying a remedy before plotting this is buying at random.

The early wave is usually a promise problem

Students who leave in the first fortnight generally did not arrive with wrong motivation - they arrived with a wrong expectation that somebody gave them, about the level, the pace, the amount of work outside class, or what they would be able to do by the end. That expectation was set before enrolment, which means the fix is in what you publish, not in what you do in week two.

The person who missed two sessions needs a route back

Falling behind is self-reinforcing: the longer somebody has been absent, the more awkward returning feels, and the awkwardness is usually what ends it rather than the material. A channel that answers "what did I miss and can I still catch up" at eleven at night, without requiring the student to telephone and explain themselves to a person, removes the specific friction that turns two absences into a withdrawal.

Ask the ones who left, not the ones who stayed

Satisfaction surveys reach the people still attending, which is the wrong population for this question. The honest and uncomfortable version is a short, genuinely easy-to-ignore message to people who stopped, asking only why. Response rates are low and the answers are worth more than everything the stayers tell you, because they are about the decision you are trying to change.