Groups

The Groups system allows parents on Classlist to communicate with a different audience for each message, comment or invitation they want to share. There are two types of groups: automatically-populated school groups and parent-created bespoke interest groups. Whenever you post any content you can select which group your message is addressed to.

Find out about joining, creating and managing groups. 

School Groups

School Groups are automatically generated by Classlist and reflect your school's individual structure of Years and Classes (as defined on the School Structure page). Each member is placed into their personal Year and Class groups based on which classes their children are in. Parents with multiple children will be in multiple School Groups.

To add, edit or delete the groups associated with years and classes, simply add, edit or delete the years and classes on your School Structure, and the groups will automatically be updated.  You cannot edit the description of a School Group.

If you have an Admin status on Classlist you will also be automatically included in the 'Ambassadors and Reps' group too, to make it easy for admins to communicate.

Interest Groups

These Groups are created by users on the parent side rather than automatically generated. They can be either 'open', ie anyone can join, or 'closed', ie parents wanting to join have to be approved by the group's owner. The group owner can change the status of a group from open to closed or vice versa if they need to. Parents can create groups themselves and add individual parents or classes. This allows parents to communicate around a shared interest even if their children are in different School Groups. 

Closed Parent Interest Groups may be created for all sorts of purposes, from music clubs or sports teams, to social groups such as book clubs or regular pub quiz teams. Group owners and Ambassadors can add, approve or remove members or delete the group. Click here for more information on managing groups.

NB: for admins, the Groups page in admin mode is only for monitoring content. If you need to change the name/membership of a school group you need to be in the School Structure page in admin mode.  

 The names of all parent groups can be seen by any parent, whether they are open or closed groups.  This is because they are for community building as such the title should not need to be secret!

Your Groups 

Click on the Groups page in the navigation to view your list of groups, together with the number of members in each one. You will see a different set of groups to other members, because the list is personalised according to which ones you belong to. The school groups are listed first, and always show the school logo to help identify them. These groups are automatically generated by the system, based on which year and class your child is assigned to. You can change your child's year and class in your Profile.

You will only see the class/year school groups which your children belong to.

All Admin members are automatically placed in the Ambassadors and Reps Group: if you do not have an admin account you will not see this group.  Therefore if you were an admin but no longer have admin status you will automatically be removed from the Ambassadors and Reps group.

Groups created by parents are displayed with a default round image unless the group owner has uploaded a cover photo (see orchestra parents vs dog walkers groups in the image below). Parent groups can be either open to join or closed. If a group is closed it simply means you need to send a request to the group owner asking to join. 

Benefits of the Groups feature

The Groups feature means parents can post things which are only applicable to that particular group, without bothering the parents in the rest of the school (ie in the example below, Year 3 homework is only relevant to parents with children in Year 3). No more endless notifications about stuff you are not interested in!