Facebook Groups are a great resource for helping schools communicate with their students and parents. Unlike Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups can be made "private" so that a teacher (or group of teachers) can communicate with a specific group of students or parents associated with their school.
Schools commonly use Facebook Groups to create separate communication "spaces" for each year level. In other words, a middle school could set up a Facebook Group specifically for their Year 7 cohort and another one for their Year 8 cohort, and so on.
To set up a new Facebook Group associated with your School Facebook Page, please do the following:
1. Navigate to your school Facebook Page. Using a desktop browser, click on the pages icon (the flag symbol) to see a list of the pages that you manage. Select your school page from the list. Please note that you will need to be a page Admin for your school in order to complete this step.
2. Select "Groups". With your school page selected, click on the "Groups" tab. The "Groups" tab is usually visible on the horizontal navigation bar for your page. If it is not visible, click on the "More" tab to reveal additional options. Please note that the "Groups" tab may not be visible or accessible if your page is unpublished.
3. Select "Create Linked Group". At this point you can link an existing group to your page, or create a new one. Click on the button named "Create linked group" to create a new group associated with your school page.
4. Enter a group name and choose the group privacy level. Enter the name of the group in the field provided and then select the privacy level of the group. We usually encourage schools to create Private groups so that they can control group membership and communication. Click the Create button to confirm and save.
5. Invite people to join your group. Click on the Invite button to invite people to join your group. You can invite people you are already connected to on Facebook, or you can send invites if you have an email address for one or more people.
