User roles explained

Every user in ADAdmin has one of six roles: Admin, Mentor, Learner, Observer, Governor, or Ofsted. The role controls what the person can see and do in ADAdmin and affects how their account is treated by connected platforms.

Admin

Admins have full management access. Use this role for:

• IT managers and system administrators
• Senior leaders who need to manage the system
• Anyone who needs to create or edit users and groups

Admins can access all features for the schools they are authorised for, including importing data, managing settings, and triggering syncs. You can also limit an individual admin to day-to-day user and group management — see Reduced admin access.

Mentor

Mentors are classroom users — typically teachers and support staff. They have limited access:

• Cannot create or delete users
• Cannot change group memberships
• Can reset passwords for learners, if the school has allowed it — for every teacher, or only for the teachers listed under School settings → Password → Mentors can reset passwords
• Can see the groups they belong to under My cohorts
• Can add Smart Parents notices, if the school uses Smart Parents
• Can give cover access to Classroom classes, only if the school has set that up and put them on its cover list

In Google Workspace and Entra, mentor accounts are typically treated as staff and are placed in staff organisational units or groups accordingly.

Learner

Learners are pupils and students. They have minimal ADAdmin access: their own profile and the groups they belong to (My cohorts). Their accounts are treated as pupil accounts in all connected platforms.

Note: Learners cannot search for other users anywhere in ADAdmin.

Observer, Governor, and Ofsted

These three roles are all "staff-lite": they can edit their own profile and search for users and groups, but — unlike Mentor — they don't get My cohorts, and like Mentor they cannot create, edit, or delete users or groups, change memberships, or access admin/sync settings. They exist to give someone limited, non-management visibility without making them a Mentor or Admin.

• Observer — a general-purpose read-only-style role for anyone who needs to look people up (e.g. a governors' clerk or a trust-level visitor) but should never manage accounts.
• Governor — for members of the school's governing body.
• Ofsted — for inspector access, typically set up for the duration of an inspection.

These three roles are also referenced in Require MFA for staff and students: the "Enable 2FA for all staff" school setting applies to every non-learner, which includes Observer, Governor, and Ofsted alongside Admin and Mentor.

Choosing the right role

Website admin is a tick box on the Details tab, not a role: it makes a member of staff an administrator on the school's website (at a trust, every school website in the trust) without giving them admin access here. See Let someone manage the school website.

If you are unsure, use Mentor for staff and Learner for pupils. You can always change the role later on the edit user page.

Changing a role

1. In the left sidebar, open Users (under Users & Groups) and select Users.
2. Find the user and select their name to open them.
3. On the Details tab, change the Role field.
4. Select Save changes.

To change several people at once, tick them on the Users page and choose Set role, then pick the new role — see Bulk actions on users.

What happens when a role changes:

• The person is added to the school's group for their new role (for example mentors), which puts them in the matching group in Google or Entra. They stay in the group for their old role too, so remove them from it on their Memberships tab if they shouldn't be there.
• If the new role is Learner or Admin, their Website admin tick is cleared.
• Their Google and Microsoft accounts are updated shortly afterwards.

Related

• Roles and permissions overview
• Create a user
• Edit a user
• Require MFA for staff and students