Admin members form the backbone of any successful Classlist site, from your faithful Class Admins to the Community Rep organising a one-off Easter Egg hunt. To make it easy for you to communicate with each other, all parents with admin status are automatically members of the Ambassadors and Reps group.
NB: A parent must be an existing approved member of your Classlist site before they can be assigned admin status (except in the case of school Staff Admins).
All admin members can create community events and send announcements. Ambassadors, Community Reps and Class Admins can also post to the whole school. See our summary table to compare the permissions for all roles.
To see who currently has admin status look at the 'school profile' page on either the admin or parent side of Classlist. There is no limit to the number of admin roles you can have at your school.
NB: Only Ambassadors or Staff Admins can assign admin status to other members. You can't change or add your own admin status - you'll need to ask another Ambassador or Staff Admin to do this for you.
This article covers the following topics:
Ambassadors, Class Admins and Community Reps
Changing or Deleting Admin Status
There are three ways to assign admin roles
- From the 'School Profile' page on the admin side click the assign button in the relevant section for the Admin role you wish to fill, then enter the name of the parent. You can add a job/role title label if you wish. You can add Ambassadors, Class Admins & Community Reps this way. For School Staff click invite from this page and fill in their details to email them an invite.
- From the 'All Parents' page on the admin side via a parent profile (not for Staff Admins). Search for the parent you want to appoint on the 'All Parents' page, (you can filter by class or by starting to type their name in the search box). Click on their name to go to their profile, then click 'Change Admin status' (next to the pink cog-wheel icon - see below). You can then select which admin role you want to assign. You can also remove or change roles from here.
- On the 'Approve Parents' page on the admin side, via the recently approved list (not for Staff Admins). After approving the parent, find them in the 'recently approved' list. Click on the chevron to the right of their name to go to their profile, then click 'Make Admin' (next to the pink cog-wheel icon). You can then select which admin role you want to assign. If you want to add a job/role title you will need to follow this step with one of the previous methods.
Ambassadors, Class Admins and Reps
To add a new Ambassador, Class Admin or Rep, simply click the 'assign' button next to each role on the School Profile page on the admin side. A small dialogue window will appear; enter the name of the the parent you wish to assign the role, and add a job/role title label if you wish (eg Events Manager, or PTA Chair). Class Admins have the 'assign' button next to each class so make sure you put the right name in for the right class!
Please be aware that Ambassadors are generally parents on Classlist, and whilst some schools do have staff members in Ambassador roles it is worth reminding them that it may be best for them to allow parent to parent communication to be the primary use of Classlist. For instance, if Staff always answer parent questions it can reduce the parent to parent communication on Classlist in some cases, as other parents may not want to jump into the conversation.
NB: When setting up class admins for a year group you need to add admin status for each class in the year separately, rather than typing in the year group. Class names must match the class name on the school structure or you won't be able to proceed.
Ambassadors & Reps Group
This group is auto-populated with everyone who has admin status. If someone is given admin status they will be added to the group, and if someone's admin status is removed, they will be removed from the group. As an automated group there is no group owner. This has been designed to make it easy for all the admins to communicate with each other in one place.
If you want different sections of admins to have smaller break away groups, eg for only class admins, or for only those involved in organising a disco, you would need to set them up separately using the groups feature on the parent side. However, if the members of these smaller groups change regularly, the group owner would need to add and remove people as this wouldn't be automatic. For more information see our page on groups.
For a Class Admin Only group - If a new group of people require a group you should set up a new group rather than reusing an old one. To create new groups on the parent side
Click '+' on a phone then select group
or '+create' on a computer
Add a group name, description and photo (if required) and choose 'closed group'. When adding members, type in 'Ambassadors and Reps' in the 'add members' section - as if you were going to add that whole group to the new group. But before saving the group, click on the chevron to the right of Ambassador & Reps and that will show all the group members. You can remove the people who aren’t Class Admins before saving the group.
Job/Role Labels
We understand that the roles we have given may differ to those used at your school and PTA. This is where the handy 'labels' feature comes in. When you assign a parent an Administrative role, you are given the option of adding a label, you can use this to describe their role eg a Community Rep may be labelled as an Events Coordinator or Treasurer etc.
Multiple Roles
A member can have more than one administrator role assigned, but you need to assign each role separately, you can't do both roles in one action. Eg If your year group has more than one class and you want class admins to work together to cover all the classes in the year, they need to be assigned to each class separately. Click on the 'change admin status' cogwheel on a parents profile page to add each admin role.
A parent can be a Class Admin for multiple classes, even if they do not have a child in that class. However, if they don't have a child in the class they will only be able to send Announcements to the class rather than post on the class feed. If they need to send posts, they can either post to the whole year group (which includes all classes), or it will be necessary for them to create a 'pretend child' eg called 'class admin', who is registered in the other classes.
Please note, a Staff Admin cannot have another role as the other roles are all parent roles.
When classes are removed
If classes are deleted on the school structure, any Class Admin associated with the class will no longer be Class Admin. However, they will be automatically given Community Rep status by the system so that they don't lose their admin status in the interim (for instance if they are shortly about to become Class Admin for another class). You can edit their Admin status from Community Rep to Class Admin, or delete their admin status completely, using 'Change Admin Status'.
Changing or Deleting Admin Status
Go to the parent's personal profile (admin side, school profile and select parent from the list of admin users. Or find them on the 'all parents' page) then tap 'change admin status'.
The dialogue box (shown below) allows you to remove admin status completely or add an additional role. If you are swapping someone's role, you need to remove the admin status before replacing it with a new one, rather than adding an extra role on top of an existing role: eg changing from someone being only an ambassador to only being a class admin.
Before deleting an ambassador account, check that any events that the Ambassador has created are assigned new event owners, otherwise the event will show as 'staff name (deleted)' and you won't be able to access it to make changes.
NB: choosing 'remove' will delete all admin roles for that parent. If the parent holds several roles and you only want to remove one, you will need to remove all and re-add the one/s you want.
School Staff
School Staff have the same administrative permissions as an Ambassador, but they do not have access to the parental side of Classlist or the features that relate to that such as Monitor Community. This is because some schools want School Staff to be inaccessible to parents.
School Staff can send Announcements and Community Events to parents in any class, year, group or the whole school.
Inviting School Staff is slightly different, as you are not assigning a parent to a role, but rather inviting a new member of school staff to join Classlist. You do this on the School Profile page on the admin side. Once you click the 'invite' button, you will need to fill out the required details and click 'Invite'. The member of staff will then receive an email inviting them to join.
Please note that Staff Admins will receive approval request emails for all members and therefore the role 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. Please see our article on inviting teachers for other ways to invite staff members.
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, so if staff do need a parent account they would need to add a 'child' called 'admin' or similar and not assigned it to a class.
Tip: If a member of staff needs to be deleted from your site, Ambassadors can do this by bringing up the teacher's profile from the School Profile page on the admin side, then tapping on the red trash can symbol. A Staff Admin cannot delete a fellow Staff Admin.
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 owners otherwise the event will show as 'staff name (deleted)' and you won't be able to access it to make changes.
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