Instagram is giving schools their own corner of the platform. Meta is expanding its School Partnership Program with new features designed to help verified students, educators, parents, and school administrators stay connected with what is happening around their school.

The expansion, announced September 29, introduces a centralized hub for school-related accounts, along with features such as Clubs & Teams, School Stories, Notes, student directories, and school banners. The program is currently focused on participating middle and high schools in the US.

Meta originally launched Instagram’s School Partnership Program in 2025 with the goal of giving educators a more direct way to report potential teen safety problems, including bullying. According to Meta, the program has now grown to nearly 17,000 school partners.

The company says the latest expansion came after feedback from school administrators, educators, and parents who wanted an easier way to keep students informed about activities and announcements across their school communities.

Instagram is building a school hub

Participating schools will now have access to Instagram Channels, which let school administrators share quick updates with followers, including parents and the broader community. Only school administrators can publish to these Channels.

Schools can also use School Stories and Notes to share information that is visible to verified students at the school. Administrators can monitor and remove this content when necessary.

For students, one of the more interesting additions is Clubs & Teams. Schools can create dedicated spaces for groups such as sports teams, clubs, and extracurricular organizations. A school could, for example, create a “Central High School Mathletes” account that acts as a central place for upcoming events and other information.

Students will also be able to see School Stories and Notes containing things such as announcements, game results, and event reminders. Posts from clubs and teams can only be made by their designated administrators or School Partnership Program administrators.

There is also a Student Banner and Directory feature. Verified students can see a directory of other students at their school and add a school banner to their profile. Meta says the banner and directory information are only visible to other students and teen followers they follow back.

Verification is at the center of the system

Instagram isn’t opening these school communities to just anyone who claims to attend a particular school.

Meta says it is working with third-party verification service UNiDAYS to verify high school students before they can join their school’s verified community. Students who aren’t verified won’t get access to the new school-community features.

That verification layer is important because the whole concept depends on keeping school communities separate from the wider Instagram audience. Meta is also giving school administrators and educators the ability to remove Club and Team accounts, as well as School Stories and Notes.

Parents get some visibility, too. Through Meta’s Family Center, parents can receive insights into their teen’s participation in a school community, including notifications when their teen joins or leaves a school.

The new features sit alongside the existing safety tools from the School Partnership Program. Reports from participating schools that potentially violate Instagram’s Community Standards are prioritized for review, with schools receiving status updates and notifications when Instagram takes action. The program also provides educational resources for educators, parents, guardians, and students.

Meta says the features are intended to help teens stay informed outside classroom hours rather than turn Instagram into another distraction during the school day. Its Teen Accounts already give parents tools to block Instagram usage during school hours.

For now, the expanded program is aimed at participating middle and high schools in the US. Schools can sign up through Instagram’s account settings under “Account type and tools” or “Business tools and controls.”

Instagram’s latest move is an interesting shift from treating schools simply as organizations with official accounts. With verified students, dedicated clubs and teams, school-specific announcements, and a student directory, the platform is creating something much closer to a private school community layered on top of Instagram.

Whether students actually use it that way will probably depend on how many schools and students participate. But Meta is clearly betting that Instagram can become more than a place where students post about school—it can also become a place where they keep up with it.