Create a Google Classroom for any group (a bespoke or combined class)

6 steps 7 min Updated 4 November 2026

Your MIS classes get their Google Classrooms automatically. For anything else — an intervention or revision group, a club, an option taught across two sets, or every Year 7 English set combined into one — create a group in Realsmart.

Any group can have a Google Classroom. You don't create the class in Google Classroom yourself: you make the group, add the people, and the sync builds the classroom and keeps it in step with the group.

Which groups get a classroom

While Provision Google Classroom is on (Google Workspace → Classroom), the sync gives a group its own Google Classroom when:

the group's status is Active or Protected — not Suspended;
it has at least one member of staff (a mentor or admin account) who is Active or Protected;
it has no more than 50 staff, and fewer than 1,000 people in total.

A group with no staff of its own still qualifies if a group nested inside it meets these rules. Groups whose names start with tof_ (Teachers of groups) never get a classroom.

Once it exists:

the group's staff are the classroom's teachers;
its learners are the students — direct members need the Active status, and learners who come through a nested group can be Active or Protected;
its Main teacher is the classroom's owner;
the class is named after the group and the school year, for example Yr7-English - 2026/2027.

Before you start

You must be an admin with the Manage users & groups permission for the current school.
Google sync and Provision Google Classroom must be on for your school — see Google Classroom settings.
The staff and pupils need Google accounts. Someone without one joins the classroom once their account exists.
Making a classroom active (Step 6) needs the Change sync, platform & API settings permission.

Steps

Step 1: Create the group

Select Groups in the left sidebar, then Add group. Enter a Group name — letters, numbers, dashes and underscores only, with no spaces (for example Yr7-English or Y11-Maths-Revision). Leave Status as Protected, then select Create group.

The new group opens. See Create a group for the name rules.

Step 2: Add the teachers

Select the Members tab. In the Add a member or group… box, type a teacher's name or username and select them. Repeat for each member of staff.

As soon as the group has a member of staff, it qualifies for a classroom, and the change you just made sends it to Google — so the classroom is usually created within a few minutes.

Step 3: Choose the main teacher

Select the Details tab. Under Main teacher, pick the teacher who should own the classroom. Tick Lock main teacher if you don't want the MIS to change it later, then select Save changes.

The list only shows staff who are members of this group directly. To make someone from a nested group the owner, add them to this group as well.
Pick someone whose account is Active. If the main teacher isn't active, or is no longer in the group, the sync gives the classroom to another of the group's staff — the lock only stops the MIS changing your pick.
If you skip this step, the sync picks one of the group's staff as owner and shows them here.
If the classroom already exists, saving moves its ownership to the teacher you picked. If Google refuses, the reason is on the group's Logs tab.

See Group membership options for more on the main teacher.

Step 4: Add the pupils

Back on the Members tab, add the pupils:

One at a time — type each pupil's name in Add a member or group… and select them.
A whole class at once (stays in step) — type the name of an existing group in the same box and select it (it's labelled Group). Everyone in that group is included, and joiners and leavers follow automatically. Its staff become teachers in this classroom too.
A whole class at once (one-off copy) — on the Groups page, tick the groups you want, choose Add members to group in the action bar and pick this group. Everyone in them is copied in now; later changes aren't picked up.

For combining classes, see Combine several classes into one below.

Step 5: Check the classroom

Select the Classroom tab.

Before the classroom exists, the tab says This group has no classroom yet and lists the teachers and students the sync will add.
If the group doesn't qualify, the tab says The sync skips this group's classroom until this is fixed and why — for example no teacher assigned. The same reason is on the group's Logs tab, as no Google Classroom: ….
Once it exists, the top of the tab shows the classroom's name, Classroom status and owner, and Who is in the classroom compares Google's roster with the group.

Step 6: Make the classroom active

Google creates every new classroom as Provisioned. Students can't see a provisioned classroom until its owner accepts it in Google Classroom. Either:

ask the main teacher to open Google Classroom and accept the class, or
select Make active beside Classroom status on the Classroom tab, and confirm. Students can see it straight away, and the owner doesn't need to accept it.

To have every new classroom start as active, turn on Create classrooms as active in Google Classroom settings. See Make a classroom active for more.

Combine several classes into one

To give, say, every Year 7 English set one shared classroom, create the combined group (Step 1), then bring the sets in. You have two choices:

	Nest the sets (live)	Copy their members (one-off)
How	On the combined group's Members tab, add each set by name in Add a member or group…	On the Groups page, tick the sets, choose Add members to group, pick the combined group and select Add members
Later changes	Follow automatically — new pupils and staff in a set join the classroom	Not picked up — you keep the list up to date yourself
Removing one pupil	Not possible without taking them out of their set	Remove them from the combined group as normal
Use it when	The combined class should match the sets all year	It's a one-off, or you'll hand-edit the list

Either way, every set's teachers become teachers in the combined classroom, so keep within the limits above. The step-by-step recipe is in Put a group inside another group.

How long it takes

Changes you make in Realsmart — adding or removing people, nesting a group, or saving the Details tab — send the group to Google straight away. The same push creates or updates its classroom, usually within a few minutes.
If Sync this group to Google is switched off on the group's Details tab, saving the group doesn't send it to Google, so its classroom waits for the nightly sync instead.
The nightly Classroom sync (10pm, Sunday to Friday) also creates any classroom that's still missing. To run it now, use Run Classroom sync on Google Workspace → Classroom — see Google Classroom settings.
Over the summer freeze, nothing is sent: outside your provisioning window, the group is saved in Realsmart and its classroom is created once sync resumes. See The provisioning window and the freeze.

If no classroom appears

Open the group's Classroom tab first — it names a teacher or size problem (no teacher assigned, too many teachers, too many people) and tells you when Classroom is off or cloud changes are held. The usual reasons:

the group has no staff who are Active or Protected (only pupils, or its teachers are suspended);
it has more than 50 staff, or 1,000 or more people;
the group is Suspended or Deleted;
the group's name starts with tof_ (Teachers of groups never get a classroom);
Provision Google Classroom is off, or Google sync is off or in preview;
the school is outside its provisioning window (the summer freeze);
none of the group's staff has a working Google account, so the classroom can't be given an owner and isn't created.

For each of these, and for a teacher who is missing from a classroom that does exist, see A teacher is missing from a Google Classroom.

Good to know

People you add by hand are locked in. The MIS won't remove them. When the class ends, remove them yourself, or archive its classroom: on the Groups page, tick the group and choose Set classroom state → Archived. An archived classroom is read-only and keeps its work. See Bulk actions on groups.
A new classroom each school year. When the new school year starts, the group gets a fresh classroom, and last year's is kept with its work. What happens to it at the end of term is set in End of term Classroom options.
Teachers who leave the group aren't always taken off the classroom. That depends on a Classroom setting for your school; the Classroom tab tells you when a teacher stays until they're removed in Google Classroom.
To add a teacher later — for cover or a head of department — add them to the group. See Add a teacher to a Google Classroom.

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