The first six weeks decide whether a student stays or goes.
First Six is a white-labelled companion that carries every commencing student through those first six weeks, and shows your team who needs a hand, from the students themselves.
One in eight
domestic students walk out of the first year.
At half the country's providers, it's one in four, and the leaving decision is set before most staff know a name.
How First Six fits.
Feature one
How First Six fits.
It fits alongside what you already run. It replaces nothing.
First Six is not another LMS, SIS, or CRM, and it doesn't try to be. Canvas, Callista, TechnologyOne, your student CRM: they stay exactly where they are. First Six sits in the one gap they leave open, the human side of a student's first six weeks, and hands the signal back to your team.
- Your LMS runs the coursework. First Six carries the belonging.
- Your SIS holds the record. First Six logs students feelings.
- Your team makes the call. As students reach out, First Six ensures staff are informed and ready to assist.
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Support for Students obligation.
Feature one
Built for the Support for Students Policy.
First Six is how universities identify first-year students who are at risk of attrition and provide them with the proper support, when it’s needed most.
The weekly check-in is your early signal. The help routes and the human-answered inbox are non-academic support, delivered and recorded. The briefing and the resources are how supports reach students in language they will actually read. And the aggregate data is evidence you can point to when the report is due.
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Belonging is the leading indicator.
Feature two
Belonging is the leading indicator.
First Six is built to make belonging visible: you are one of many here, you are not the only one finding this week heavy, and here are your people and one small way to meet them.
We are honest about what we measure. Belonging and engagement are leading indicators, they move before retention does, which is what makes them useful to act on early. We do not claim a retention number we cannot stand behind. Connect your student records and we can show the link for your own cohort. Until then, we report the signal, not a promise.
Care, without surveillance.
Feature four
Care, without surveillance.
How a student is feeling is shown to staff in aggregate, never as a list of names, with small numbers held back so no one can be singled out.
A student is only ever contacted personally when they choose to raise their hand. The help a student receives comes from a real person on your team, never from an AI pretending to be one. Single sign-on through your existing identity, a full record of every change, and your data exportable in full, any time. The trust students place in the first weeks is the thing we protect most.
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For Staff
Read how the cohort is feeling, and respond to the students who reach out. You see the shape of the room without watching anyone, act while it still matters, and keep a record of the support you gave.
For Students
First Six meets a student where they actually are. Each week it surfaces the few things that matter and the few worth doing, points them to the right help from a real person, and asks how they are going. A calmer way through the first six weeks, and beyond.
The window
The first six weeks determine student retention.
First-year attrition for domestic bachelor students sat at 12.2% for the 2023 commencing cohort; providers average closer to 20%, and half exceed 25%.
Around 60% of first-years say they didn't feel prepared for university. The doubt takes root early, in the weeks before census, while a new student decides whether they belong here.
Dept. of Education, Selected Higher Education Statistics 2024; TEQSA 2017.
Where First Six lands.
The first six weeks, done properly.
For students, and for your team.
Author the full six weeks
Write every week's briefing, to-do, and check-in, build ahead in draft, and preview it exactly as a student will see it before publishing.
See how the cohort feels
An aggregate read of how the cohort is feeling week by week, names never shown, with a board report ready for your Support for Students return.
Respond to who needs help
An inbox of the students who raised a hand, crisis cases first, that you assign, answer, and track so no one waits too long.
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Target by audience, no spreadsheets
Aim any briefing or event at the right students using groups synced from your enrolment data or built by hand, like first-in-family.
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Draft faster, review everything
An assistant that drafts events, to-dos, and answers for you to review, staff-only, that never writes anything to students.
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Your brand, your team, your data
Your brand set at onboarding, features you switch on or off, roles for your team, a full audit trail, and CSV export any time.
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A weekly briefing, not a portal
One page each week with the few things that matter and the one thing worth doing, across a six-week arc from 'Welcome' to 'You made it'.
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A check-in that catches the wobble
One light question on how the week is going, where choosing "I need help" quietly brings a real person to reach out.
Help from a real person
A private route to ask for help that reaches a named person on the team, never an automated message or AI.
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A planner for your coursework
A personal workspace with a board or a list, subject tags, due dates, a focus timer, and notes you keep as you go.
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Your whole week, organised
A timetable you build by dragging or pasting your enrolment, with this week's events filtered to you and ready to add to your calendar.
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Everything you need, in one place
The links, campus maps, human-written answers, and saved items a student actually reaches for, grouped the way they think.
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For students
Everything a new student needs, in one calm place.
Instead of five logins and a firehose of email, each student opens one clear view built around their course, their campus, and the week they're in.
A weekly briefing keeps them oriented, their timetable and tasks sit side by side, and the events that build belonging are easy to find. Less overwhelm, more momentum.
Build the whole six weeks.
Author every week's briefing, top to-do, and check-in in one place. Start from a template, build the later weeks ahead in draft, and aim anything at the right students by campus, degree, or group.
Before it goes live, preview the week exactly as a student will see it, so nothing reaches them you have not stood behind.
See how the cohort feels.
The weekly check-in rolls up into a clear read of the whole cohort, week by week, in aggregate, with names never shown and small numbers held back.
You catch a heavy week while there is still time to act, and the board report drops out ready for your annual Support for Students return.
Respond to who needs a hand in minutes.
Every student who raises their hand lands in one inbox, the urgent ones first, each assigned to a real person and tracked so nobody waits too long. Replies come from your team in a private thread, never an AI, with a crisis path that hands off to your own protocol for the moments that matter most.
Why
choose First Six.
Clarity
Get a read on how your commencing cohort is doing, and the tools to act before week six is over.
Every request for help arrives in one place, sorted and ready, with a clear path for higher-acuity situations that hands off to your own crisis protocol rather than leaving a staff member to guess.
Belonging and engagement shown in aggregate as leading indicators, never dressed up as a retention number we cannot stand behind. Whether a student stayed enrolled is something only your own records can confirm.
Author each week's briefing, events, and to-dos, with clear status for what is published, live now, scheduled, or not yet prepared, across all six weeks at once.
University-synced groups stay locked and correct because the university already owns them, while your team can build custom audiences with full control when a moment calls for it.
Tracked checklists for one-time setup like launching a new cohort, and reference guides for the recurring jobs, so a new staff member is never lost on their first day.
Your colour, logo, and typeface, locked at onboarding. To a student it reads as their university reaching out in the first weeks, not a third-party app.
Belonging
From the day they accept their offer to the end of week six, a calm and human guide to starting well.
Each week, the few things that actually matter and the one thing worth doing this week, written in plain human language. No portal to dig through and no noise, just what the week needs.
One light question on how the week is going. A moment to pause, and a private way to say when something feels hard, before it quietly becomes a reason to leave.
A private route to ask for help that reaches someone real on your team, with a safety net for higher-acuity moments that follows your own protocol rather than guessing.
University-synced groups stay locked and correct because the university already owns them, while your team can build custom audiences with full control when a moment calls for it.
They see that they are one of many, that a heavy week is normal, and where to find their people. Belonging is what keeps a first-year from quietly drifting away.
Timetable, key dates, events worth going to, and a simple list of what to do this week, so nothing important slips during the weeks that decide whether a student stays.
A light workspace to keep their own notes and track their own week, sitting alongside the briefing. Theirs to use, or not.
For your team
Support that reaches the quiet ones.
The students most at risk are often the least likely to ask. A gentle weekly check-in gives them a low-stakes way to signal how they're going, and a hard week opens the right support straight away.
Your team sees how the cohort is settling through aggregate, privacy-safe trends, never a watchlist. Belonging built in, surveillance designed out.
AI helps your team, never your students.
We are deliberate about where AI belongs. It works behind the scenes to help your staff move faster. It never speaks to your students, and it never decides anything about them.
AI that sounds like care is not care. We use it to give your team time back, so they have more of themselves to give to the students who need them.
