Instagram has widened the set of tools available to schools and their verified students through its School Partnership Program. Under the expansion, partner schools can now create clubs and teams that act as a central place for sharing information and upcoming events, Meta said. Administrators for those groups and the school's overall program admin can publish Stories and Notes. The features became available on Tuesday.
Meta launched the School Partnership Program last year with a commitment to prioritize reports filed by participating schools when their students run into bullying and harassment on the app. The company said those reports are moved up in its moderation queue and that it responds to them within 48 hours. The new posting abilities build on that arrangement between Meta and the schools.
School administrators can also set up Channels for posting important updates to their community, an audience that can include parents and teachers in addition to students. The company pointed to an example in which an admin for a basketball team used the school's Stories to announce tryouts. Clubs, teams and Channels are meant to give partner schools a single hub for communication.
Access to the Stories and Notes is restricted to students who have been verified for a given school. Meta works with the third-party service UNiDAYS to confirm a student's identity before that student is allowed to join a school community. Students who complete verification can view a school directory that lists their verified peers.
Verified students can additionally place a school banner on their profile. That banner is visible only to other students and to the teens they follow back, keeping it out of view for the wider Instagram audience. The school-focused features went live alongside the rest of the expansion.
The changes apply to Instagram users in the United States who are part of a participating school, where the program's moderation commitments and student verification process are already in place. Meta has framed the effort as a way to give schools a more direct channel to the platform on harassment reports while giving verified students a space limited to their own school community.
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