Adding Staff & Teachers to Classlist

While it is not necessary to add all staff and teachers to Classlist it can be useful in some cases. Schools can use Classlist for school to parent, PTA to parent and/or parent to parent communication. Examples where teachers and staff might want to join Classlist include:

• A staff member from the admissions team to help with approving new parents.
• Staff or teachers on the PTA who wants to communicate with parents.
• Teachers running a school trip where they want to provide updates.

Tip: You can also use the public checkout at events to let teachers that haven't joined Classlist get event tickets.

What types of staff account are there?

How do I invite someone to the Staff Admin role?

What email will invited staff get and how do they join?

Staff admin account FAQ about who should join

Email Notifications for Staff Admin Plus accounts

How can Teachers/Staff communicate on Classlist?

What can/can't Staff Admins do?

Moderation rights and reviewing content

What types of staff account are there?

The Staff admin account is available to staff, with and without user management permissions.

• Staff Admin plus - with user management permissions (may suit admissions office staff)
• Staff Admin  - without user management permissions (may suit teachers)

They are both set up in a similar way, and a tick box can be ticked or unticked at any time to change between the roles. 

NB: The Staff Admin account without admin management permissions is a new role for 2025. If Staff Admin roles were created before this time they are now renamed as Staff Admin Plus and they will still have user management permissions as before.

Staff admins with user management permissions

We recommend there be at least one Staff Admin with Classlist user management permissions. This is usually a member of the school Admissions team, or someone responsible for data management who has access to the school roll and parent lists.

• This user manages parent invitations and approvals and manages the roll over for your school’s Classlist account including making changes to the school structure.
• These users may additionally set up the school profile content and interest groups on Classlist for the school community, especially if this aspect is not managed by a PTA Committee who would use parent Ambassador or Community Rep accounts.
• Staff admins with user management permissions can also create content (events/raffles/announcements) in the same way those without management permissions.
• won't have access to the parent side, and they cannot communicate with parents via private messages. Parent members cannot initiate contact with them 

Please note that Staff admins will receive approval request emails for all members if your school is not using an integration option to invite parents. Therefore, user management permissions may not be suitable for your Headteacher!  It is aimed more at a staff administrator who is going to help with approvals and send limited communications via Classlist. 

Staff admins without user management permissions

• Users with this role can create content such as events, raffles and announcements which they can send to any class/year/group across the school. They can also read any reply to any comments on this content. This may suit teachers who want to communicate with their class or school trip leaders.
• They can also make changes to the website and school profile page.
• won't have access to the parent side, and they cannot communicate with parents via private messages. Parent members cannot initiate contact with them.

There is no option to change the school structure, move parents/children to different classes or approve/deactivate anyone.

How do I invite someone to the Staff Admin roles?

• Only Ambassadors and Staff Admin Plus users can invite other Staff Admins.
• The process is the same to invite people to both Staff Admin and Staff Admin plus roles.
• Go to the 'Reps & Admins' page in the green Admin side, find the Staff Admin section and tap the 'invite' button at the bottom of the section.
• Enter the staff member's name, email address and a label (eg Head Teacher/School Secretary) in the dialogue box.  
• Tick the box to assign as Staff Admin Plus or leave it blank.

• The staff member will immediately appear as 'invited' on the School Profile page in the green admin side.
• The member of staff will receive an email inviting them to join (see below). 
• They will set a password and can login.
• NB Staff Admins cannot be bulk uploaded.

What email will invited staff get and how do they join?

Invite email to staff admin plus users

Invite email to staff admin without extra permissions

After clicking join, staff will need to set a password, add a phone number and agree to the terms and conditions. Then they will be taken to their account.

Staff can login on both desktop and mobile by entering their email address and the password that they set. Normally, once they are logged in they will stay logged in.

Staff admin account FAQ

Who should join Classlist as a Staff admin?

Any staff, including leadership secretaries, communications staff, teachers or school trips leads, who wish to send announcements, set up and run a community event or fundraising raffle (UK only), or create an interest group for a select group of parents. This also applies to staff who wish to help check-in guests to a school event using the Classlist QR code scanner.

The Data Manager or a member of the Admissions team should join in order to manage parent Classlist invitations and accounts, as well as the annual roll over. This person can also manage the School Profile content on Classlist if this is not managed by a PTA.

Who should not join Classlist as a Staff admin?

• Staff do not need a Classlist account to attend events published on Classlist. Instead, the event organiser should enable the public checkout for staff to checkout as a guest on community event and then share this link with staff members and/or on the website.
• Parents who are staff at the same school as their children should register for a parent account. If they need to have admin rights alongside their parent account then it may be best to assign admin status to to their parent account rather than set up a second account. If they also have a staff admin account, a different, personal email address will be required for their parent account.

What’s the difference between parent admin accounts and staff admin accounts?

• Staff do not have access to parent-generated content whereas parent reps and ambassadors do.
• However, staff can view comments added by parents to the announcements they have sent from their Staff admin accounts.
• Please see our table of admin permissions for what each role can do.

Email Notifications for Staff Admin Plus accounts

Please note: for Staff Admin plus accounts, approval email notifications cannot be turned off. If members of staff who are on your site as Staff Admin plus do not wish to deal with approvals you will need ask them simply to ignore approvals emails or set up an inbox rule to ignore approval requests. After the initial mass join-up phase there shouldn't be too much extra email traffic from approvals, but it is possible that for instance a headteacher may not want to have a Staff Admin plus status themselves as a result.

How can Teachers/Staff communicate on Classlist?

Announcements are the best way for teachers to reach the parents in a class, year or group - simply choose the classes or groups you want to reach, add a title and send your message. 

• Staff Admins can see and reply to parent comments on the announcements they send.
• Comments on an announcement can be turned off straight after sending or later on.
• Parents will be notified via a push notification to their app or by email if they don't see the push notification within an hour of sending (depending on the preferences they have set).
• You can add images, links and attachments, and format the fonts etc in announcements.
• Youtube videos can be shared by pasting in the url.
• Only admin users can send announcements.

What can/can't Staff Admins do?

• Staff Admins can see Announcements in the admin section, including announcements sent by other admins.
• Staff Admins can see comments on those Announcements, including comments on announcements sent by other admins.
• Staff Admins can't create posts directly, they can only create Announcements. This is because they are not in the parent group.
• Staff Admins cannot see the parent group or its feed, as they are not parents and can't access groups.
• Admin-sent Announcements do appear in the group feed and look similar to a parent post, but Announcements do say at the top that they are an announcement to clarify the difference.

Staff Admins are ringfenced from parents. They do not have access to private messaging, to avoid parents creating additional work for staff by contacting them in this way. Plus Staff Admins cannot read parent group content.
This is so that Staff Admins have control over their communications on Classlist via announcements, but do not have to monitor other content from parents which would create work for Staff.

Changing Staff account to parent account

If a school staff admin member needs to change their access and use one of the other parent admin accounts, they will need to either delete their staff account and set up a new one on the parent side, or create a new account with a different email address. It is not possible for a staff account email to also be linked to a parent account. All parent accounts need to have a child linked to them.

Deleting a Staff account

If a member of staff needs to be deleted from your site, Ambassadors can do this by bringing up the profile from the Reps & Admin page on the admin side, then tapping on the red trash can symbol. A Staff Admin cannot delete a fellow Staff Admin.

NB: Anyone who is deleting a staff account should also check that any events that the Staff Admin member has previously created are also assigned new event organisers otherwise the event will show as 'staff name (deleted)' and you won't be able to access it to make changes.

Moderation rights and reviewing content

Ambassadors have moderation rights on Classlist.  Ambassadors can remove content and have the ability to see communication in groups they are not in via monitor community for that reason. 

Staff Admins are ring-fenced from the parent area and cannot view parent groups.  Also parents can not private message staff admins. Many schools wish the parent and staff roles to be separated in this way.  

Some schools do have a member of staff as Ambassador and it is up to your school how to use the roles on Classlist.  However, Ambassadors are almost always parents on the Parent Association committee and not staff.  We find this is very effective.  It is very rare that Classlist is misused by parents.  If a parent did put an inappropriate post other parents could report it, Ambassadors would be informed and they could remove the post.  We feel it can be easier if this moderation role is parent-on-parent moderation rather than staff on parent moderation. 

The reasons Classlist is not misused (unlike social media) include:

• Our member guidelines and T&Cs state Classlist shouldn't be used to complain about the school or people connected with the school and parents respect this.  
• Parents can report posts, so if a parent did see inappropriate content they can report it
• Most parents don't want to be party to complaints by other parents and so they will report inappropriate content because they can do so easily.  On social media reporting content is almost impossible
• The school name is at the top
• The school invited parents to join
• All members are named and associated with a child.  In social media sometimes you can only see someone's number or nickname and not their real name or whose parent they are.  
• People who breach our Member Guidelines could be removed from Classlist right away, or temporarily deactivated - though this is very rare.

We have hundreds of thousands of users and this method of ensuring respectful communities has been proven to work!