Adding Staff to Classlist

Some schools have staff who want to interact with the parent community, such as a staff member on the PTA.  Or some are using Classlist for school-parent as well as parent-parent and PTA-parent communication.  

Currently, if you add a member of school staff to Classlist as a Staff Admin they:

• will be able to invite and approve parents and make changes to the school structure (we will be making this optional shortly).
• will be able to send announcements and events out to any combination of classes, years or groups.
• won't have access to the parent side, and they cannot communicate with parents via private messages.

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

Staff Admin access only

The School Staff Admin role can be used by a member of staff to help do member approvals and set up the school structure. Staff Admins can also send announcements and create community events, but they can't access the parent side of Classlist. 

Some schools appoint class teachers as Staff Admins to enable them to send announcements and events to their class. Staff Admins can see and reply to comments on their announcements and events, but because they cannot access the parent part of Classlist, parent members cannot initiate contact with them individually via Messages, and vice versa.  

To invite a member of school staff to become a Classlist Staff Admin

• Only Ambassadors and Staff Admins can invite other Staff Admins
• Go to the 'School Profile' page in the green Admin side, find the Staff Admin section and tap the 'invite' button.
• Enter the staff member's name, email address and a label (eg Head Teacher/School Secretary) in the dialogue box. 

• 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.

Please note that approval email notifications cannot be turned off; if members of staff who are on your site as Staff Admins 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 status themselves as a result.

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*, 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.

*UK only

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 that each role has.

What types of staff account are there?

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

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 can also create content in the same way as other staff admins who do not have user management permissions.

Please note that Staff admins will receive approval request emails for all members if you’re 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. 

Coming soon - Staff admins without user management permissions

Similar to above but without the option to change the school structure, move parents and children to new classes or approve or deactivate anyone.

Moderation rights and viewing groups

Ambassadors have moderation rights on Classlist.  Ambassadors can remove content and have the ability to see communication in groups they are not in 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!