Moving up your classes ready for the new school year

The moving up procedure seems a bit daunting at first, but it can be broken down into distinct stages.

1. Edit the year names, including creating new years for leavers and joiners.
2. Create new classes in each year.
3. Move pupils into their new classes.
4. Remove any leavers who aren't joining a Leavers group.

Tip: you should re-name your year groups - i.e. you should not move the pupils up into another year group on the school structure.  For more detail see below.

All this is done on the School Structure page in Admin Mode. It's best to try to get it done before the start of the new academic year, ideally in July, but of course some schools do not allocate children to classes until September so need to wait.

The great news is that when new GDPR legislation came into effect in May 2018, schools can lawfully give the PTA (as data controller) a list of which class pupils have moved into, so that you can put them in the right class in the summer ready for September. They can also give you a list of pupils who have left, for the purpose of keeping the data on your Classlist site up to date. You must only use that pupil data to update which class pupils are in, and delete leavers. In addition, any personal data sent from the school to the PTA digitally must be transmitted using a secure, encrypted form of communication.  Alternatively, your school could have a Staff Admin on Classlist to assist with approvals and move up directly.

Our lawyers Veale Wasbrough Vizards have approved these processes ready for GDPR. 

 Add and edit Years 

Creating a Leavers and Joiners Year

Many schools keep the top year group on Classlist as part of a ‘Leavers' year group.  This means they can stay in touch with each other and can be invited to your PTA events etc.

To do this, rename the top year as something like 'Leavers 2018' or '2018 Alumni'.

Those parents who won't have a child at the school may change their notification preferences if they don't want to get announcements, but wish to continue getting posts in their groups and events. Parents can delete their own account in their profile should they wish to. 

If you decide leaving families should leave your Classlist site then delete the pupils and deactivate the parent members if they don't have any other children in the school. The parents can then fully delete their own accounts at any time, but can also join another school on Classlist after you have de-activated them, which they often want to do.  

Joiners - The next thing you need to do is create a new year in the school structure for the new intake into the lowest year in your school. When newbie parents are invited to join your Classlist site they need to see their child's class ready and waiting for them!   You can add this class before you move the other classes around if you are welcoming new joiners before that.

It is helpful to add the academic year into the year group name for the joining phase, as new parents sometimes get confused and put their children in the wrong year.  eg Reception 2018-19.

Tip: remember that to add a new year or class, you need to type the name in where it says 'type year name' in grey text before you can activate the Add button.

Editing the other Years

Now you need to rename all your other school years in the school structure by clicking on the little pencil icon next to each year name.  eg Year 5 is renamed as Year 6.  Do not move the current Year 5 pupils into the Year 6 on your school structure...

This is because each year group cohort must remain linked to all its own posts and content, rather than inheriting the previous year group's content, which is what would happen if you simply moved all this year's Year 5 children into the year named 'Year 6' in the structure.  i.e. they would see the year above's messages from last year, and no longer see the messages sent to their own year.

What was Year 5 in 2017/18 therefore becomes Year 6 in 2018/19 and so on down through the school. It can really help to add the academic year to the name while you are doing this so that you can keep track (you can always delete the '2018/19' bit later if you want).

If your school has multiple year groups in a class, you should add completely new year groups (and/or classes) and then delete the old years, rather than re-naming years. Again, this is because you shouldn't move pupils into a year previously used by others, as it shows them the previous content in that group.

You should now have a ‘new’ year group structure in which to organise your classes!  Don't move any pupils until you have added your new classes.

Create new Classes

If classes remain the same as the children move up through the school then you can simply rename or check each class without moving pupils (eg some schools use a 'house' class system where there is no pupil migration between classes from year to year).

However, if your school moves children around into new class groups every year you will need to find out the destinations of each individual pupil. The recent data protection changes mean that it is now legal for schools to provide the PTA with a list of names allocated to classes, but as noted above, you must be careful with the data, and only use it for this purpose. Or even better, if you have a school staff member on Classlist they might do the move-up for you!

Create your new classes alongside the old ones in each year group. (Again, don't just move new children into old classes or the new parents will see messages sent to the previous year's parents).

If you don't know what class pupils are going to be in yet, but want to add the classes you could add an extra class in the year called 'Year 5 - class unassigned' as a temporary holding class within the right year group.

NB If your school only has one class per year you don't need to create classes within your year groups - you can simply use year groups and name them what you like.

Please note, when a class is deleted the members will no longer see the messages sent to that group, and admin status will be removed from any Class Admins for that class.

If your school structure is complicated and you need help do contact us!

Move pupils into their new Class

Now select the year group from which you want to start moving children to new classes; this will display all the children in that year. Click and release on each pupil to select them - you can select multiple names.

After selecting the pupils that you want to move to one destination class, look for a drop down menu above the selected pupils column labelled 'select year/class to move pupil'.  Find the class that you want to move your selected pupils to, and then click the red 'Move' button (see screenshot). Alternatively, you can drag them across the column divide and drop them into their new class that way.

In the example above the old year 2 children are being moved into their new year 3 classes - the children currently selected from the whole year group will be moved to a new class ('Mrs Neville's') using the drop down class selector visible near the move button.

Once this is done you can delete the old, empty classes.

Removing any children who have left during the year

During this process, you might run into some students you cannot find on your list of new class allocations. For now, it is best to simply add them to the unassigned year group. It may be that these pupils have now left the school, in which case you should remove them and deactivate the associated parent accounts. It is always good to double check you haven't simply missed them out when when moving pupils around however!

Ambassadors can delete a pupil on the school structure page and can then also deactivate the parent on the All Parents page. These are two separate actions, as the parent may still have another child at the school.

Invited Parents

Tip: Invited parents (sometimes known as 'Non-Members') can also be moved up if you want them to stay associated with the correct year cohort, and this could be an opportunity to review and delate any invited parents who have not yet signed up after a reasonable length of time.

To move 'Invited Parents' you just need to re-send them an invitation with their new Class/Year selected instead of the old one. Simply visit the Invite Parents page and scroll through to find the required parent. We're sorry at the moment you can't search through invited parent lists. Click the red pencil icon to edit the entry for the invited parent and save the new information before tapping  'invite/remind' to resend the invitation with the new class association. 

When the old class is deleted their association with that will be lost.

To remove 'Invited Parents' follow the same initial steps as described above to edit an entry, but tap 'delete' instead of invite/remind.

Assign admins to your new classes

Reps are great for welcoming parents, arranging class events, and getting the parents talking on Classlist.  Make a parent in each class into an admin, which gives them access to some extra features such as announcements.   Ask them to put a post on Classlist every couple of days - asking questions is often a good start, as parents like to help others by answering.  Admins can also try to ensure that all parents in the class join Classlist - being methodical about checking who has joined is a successful strategy for getting all your parents on Classlist quickly.

For more info on assigning admins see here.