Guides ·
Alternatives to Facebook for Schools
Looking for an alternative to Facebook or X for your school? Explore ways to share photos, updates and events with parents more privately.
By The Maple Team
Alternatives to Facebook for Schools: A More Private Way to Share School Life
School life is full of moments worth sharing. A brilliant performance in the school play, a class enjoying their first residential trip, a winning goal on sports day or simply something wonderful happening in the classroom.
For parents, seeing these moments can mean a lot. They get a glimpse of what their children have been doing, often at times when they can't be there themselves.
For years, schools have turned to Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram to share these experiences. They're familiar, easy to use and many parents already have accounts.
But more schools are questioning whether public social media is really the right place for photographs of children and everyday school updates.
The good news is that there are alternatives. And moving away from public social media doesn't have to mean losing that connection with parents.
Why are schools reconsidering public social media?
Social media has made it incredibly easy for schools to celebrate achievements and share news with their communities.
But these platforms weren't designed specifically for schools. They're built for much larger audiences, often encouraging people to share content as widely as possible.
That's not necessarily what a school needs.
A photo from a Year 6 residential might be lovely for the children's parents to see. But does it need to be available to anyone on the internet?
There are several reasons schools might be reconsidering how they share content.
Children's privacy
Once a photograph is published on a public social media account, a school has limited control over what happens next.
Images can be downloaded, copied, shared and potentially used in ways nobody originally intended.
Even deleting the original post doesn't guarantee that every copy disappears.
A private platform can help schools limit access to the people who are meant to see the content, rather than making photographs available to a wider public audience.
Artificial intelligence
AI has added another dimension to concerns about sharing children's photographs online.
Publicly accessible images can potentially be collected, analysed or reused by third parties, including for facial recognition and AI-related purposes.
That doesn't mean every photograph uploaded to Facebook or X is automatically used to train an AI model. But it raises a reasonable question: should a child's photograph be publicly accessible when the intended audience is simply their family and school community?
Advertising and algorithms
Public social media platforms are designed to keep people engaged. Their feeds are shaped by recommendations, advertising and algorithms.
A school update shouldn't have to compete with unrelated videos, advertisements or other content to reach a parent.
Nor should parents need to spend time on a public social network simply to find out how their child's school trip is going.
Safeguarding
Schools have responsibilities that go beyond ordinary social media use.
For some children, publicly identifying their location, school or activities may create particular risks.
Schools also need to consider individual circumstances, publication permissions and safeguarding arrangements.
Photographs of identifiable children will generally involve personal data, meaning schools must consider their responsibilities under UK data protection law.
Public sharing isn't automatically unlawful, but schools should think carefully about whether it's appropriate, who needs to see the content and what protections are in place.
What should schools look for in an alternative?
Before choosing a platform, it helps to think about what the school actually wants to achieve.
For many schools, the requirements are quite straightforward:
- Share photographs and videos with parents
- Publish news and everyday classroom updates
- Keep families informed during trips and residentials
- Share information with individual classes or year groups
- Give staff control over who can publish content
- Make it easy for parents to find relevant updates
- Keep content away from public social media
Privacy matters, but so does simplicity.
If sharing a photograph involves several complicated steps, staff are less likely to use the system regularly. If parents need to navigate a complicated application, updates might go unread.
The best solution is one that works for both sides.
It's also important to understand how access is managed, what happens when a family leaves the school, where information is stored and how photographs can be removed when necessary.
Alternatives to Facebook and X for schools
There are several established products designed to help schools communicate with families.
Some concentrate on sharing classroom moments while others provide broader school administration and communication tools.
Here are some worth considering.
1. ClassDojo
Best for: Classroom communication and parent engagement.
ClassDojo helps teachers connect with families.
Its Class Story and School Story features allow staff to share photographs, videos, announcements and other updates with connected parents.
ClassDojo also offers classroom engagement features, messaging and other education-focused functionality.
For schools already using ClassDojo in classrooms, extending it to parent updates may be a natural choice.
Things to consider: ClassDojo covers more than community sharing. Schools should assess whether its classroom-focused approach suits the wider communication experience they want.
2. Tapestry
Best for: Early years learning journals and sharing children's development.
Tapestry is widely associated with early years education.
It allows educators to record observations, add photographs and videos and share children's learning journeys with their families.
Parents can follow their child's progress and contribute observations from home.
It's particularly useful where recording learning and development is a central requirement.
Things to consider: Tapestry is primarily a learning journal and education platform. Schools looking mainly to share whole-school news, sporting events or residential trip updates may not need that depth of learning and assessment functionality.
3. ReachMoreParents by Weduc
Best for: Schools wanting a comprehensive parent communication platform.
ReachMoreParents provides tools for schools communicating with families.
These include a social media-style newsfeed for photographs and videos, messaging, notifications and other communication features.
It's designed to bring together different aspects of communication between schools and parents.
Things to consider: Schools seeking a wider communication solution may benefit from its broader features. Those looking for a lightweight place to share everyday moments should consider how much of the platform they actually need.
4. Classlist
Best for: Parent communities and PTA activities.
Classlist focuses on helping school parents connect with one another.
It provides private parent communities, groups, events and tools for organising activities.
This can be particularly useful for PTAs, class representatives and parent-led events.
Things to consider: Classlist places considerable emphasis on relationships and communication between parents. Schools primarily looking for staff-led updates and event photographs may have different priorities.
5. Famly
Best for: Nurseries and early years providers.
Famly combines parent communication with a broader range of nursery management features.
It supports updates and media sharing alongside features such as attendance, billing and nursery administration.
For nurseries wanting to manage several parts of their day-to-day operations in one place, this can be appealing.
Things to consider: For organisations simply looking to share photographs, updates and events, a full nursery management system may be more than they require.
6. Maple
Best for: Schools and communities wanting a simple, private place to share what is happening.
Maple is a new UK-built community platform created to offer an alternative to sharing everyday moments through public social media.
Rather than building another public audience, Maple gives organisations a private space for the people who are already part of their community.
Schools can organise parents and staff into classes or groups, share photographs and videos, publish updates and create events.
One of the ideas behind Maple is making it easier for parents to follow the moments they would otherwise miss.
For example, a school running a Year 6 residential can create an event and share updates throughout the trip.
14:31 — We've arrived safely and everyone is settling in.
17:45 — Dinner finished. Time for the evening activities!
21:10 — Campfire finished. Everyone's exhausted.
Parents can follow along privately, without the school needing to publish updates on Facebook or X.
Maple is designed around real-world communities, with organisations controlling membership and access to the content they share.
Maple starts by making community sharing straightforward, with plans to grow into a wider platform that helps schools and organisations manage more of their everyday activities.
Things to consider: Maple is a newer platform and is still developing. Schools requiring an extensive set of established integrations, assessment tools or wider school management functionality may find a more comprehensive product better suited to their needs.
Why we're building Maple
Maple started with a conversation about a school reconsidering its use of X.
The school was reviewing its approach to sharing children's photographs publicly because of concerns about privacy, safeguarding and how images might be used by AI.
That really resonated with us.
As parents ourselves, we've become increasingly conscious of how much information we put online, particularly when it involves children.
We have our own concerns about social media, the way personal information is used and how little control people can have over content once it's publicly available.
But we also know how lovely it is to see photographs from school. Those little glimpses into your child's day are genuinely special.
We didn't think schools should have to choose between sharing those moments and keeping them within their community.
So we started building Maple.
We're a small UK team with a background in software engineering, and we wanted to create something straightforward that schools could actually enjoy using.
A place where teachers can share what is happening, parents can feel involved and organisations can decide who gets to see their content.
We're starting with the things that bring communities together: photographs, updates, groups and events.
But our plans for Maple go further than sharing moments. Over time, we want to introduce features like forms, registers and other simple tools that help schools, clubs and community organisations with the things they do every day.
We're not trying to build another complicated system that takes time to learn and manage. We want Maple to grow alongside the communities using it, introducing useful features that make life a little easier for everyone.
We're still early in that journey and we're speaking with schools about what they actually need. That's what will shape where Maple goes next.
Is a private platform automatically safer than social media?
Not necessarily.
A private platform can reduce the audience for a photograph, but it doesn't remove every risk.
Authorised users may still take screenshots, save content or share information outside the platform.
Schools must still consider which children can be photographed, whether particular images should be shared and who should have access to them.
No application replaces good safeguarding policies, staff judgement or appropriate data protection procedures.
When evaluating any platform, schools should ask:
- How are parents and staff invited, verified and removed?
- Can photographs be restricted to the relevant class or group?
- Who can publish, edit and delete content?
- What happens when a parent or member leaves?
- How does the provider protect personal information?
- What options exist for removing content or responding to a concern?
- Does the platform's approach fit the school's own privacy and safeguarding policies?
The right technology should make good practice easier, not promise to do the school's safeguarding work for it.
Do schools need to stop using Facebook altogether?
Not necessarily.
Public social media can still be useful for promoting open days, advertising vacancies, celebrating general achievements and reaching prospective families.
There's a difference between sharing information intended for the wider public and sharing everyday moments involving identifiable children.
Schools might reasonably decide to continue using public channels for general news and promotion while moving classroom photographs, trip updates and more personal content into a private platform.
The two approaches can work alongside one another.
The important thing is choosing the audience intentionally.
Choosing what's right for your school
There isn't one answer that will suit every school.
If you need learning journals and assessment tools, Tapestry may be a good fit.
If classroom engagement and parent messaging are priorities, ClassDojo is worth exploring.
If you want comprehensive school communications, ReachMoreParents may offer what you need.
And if you're primarily looking for a simple, private place to keep your school community connected through updates, photographs and events, Maple is one option to consider.
Whichever platform you choose, we'd encourage you to involve staff and parents in the decision. Find out what they use today, what frustrates them and what would genuinely make keeping in touch easier.
The aim isn't to share less of school life.
It's to share those moments with the people they're meant for.
A little more about Maple
We're building Maple to give schools, clubs and other real-world communities a private place to share, connect and stay informed.
We're currently working with schools to understand how Maple can best support their communities.
If your school is reviewing its use of Facebook, X or other social media platforms, we'd love to hear what you're looking for.
Disclosure: This guide is published by the team behind Maple. We've included other platforms because different schools have different needs, and we believe schools should be able to make an informed choice.