Add TA role that does not require owner rights on organization

[taniya-mishra]

Hi everyone,

My organization recently started Github Classroom to set up different github classrooms. Each classroom has different sets of TAs. We would like the TAs to have full visibility into the classroom that they are assigned to but not the other classrooms. Additionally, we don't want them to have Owner privileges --- which currently seems to be the only way that they have full visibility into the classroom.

Github team, can you please help?

A suggestion...(optional)

No response

[RyzenFromFire]

Currently, the best solution for this is to create a separate GitHub Organization and Classroom for each class and for each semester the class is offered. It seems a bit clunky at first, but if you think about it, it actually helps with organization in the long run because with a sufficient number of students you will accumulate a large number of repositories - if not properly named, it could quickly become problematic.

There is currently no way for TAs not to have owner/admin privileges in your Organization. I suggest not using the same Organization that your Classroom is attached to for something not associated with that class. I should hope you trust your TAs enough to be responsible for their own class's assignments. If you're really worried about someone deleting class materials, create a separate "main" organization and repo(s) for the latest class materials that are only accessible to instructors and not TAs, as this tutorial suggests.

If you have one Classroom for each section of the same class, I think that's excessive - sections generally can and should be combined into one Classroom instance. However, if you're talking about not wanting TAs across different actual classes to not be able to interact, that makes a lot of sense, and I thought about the same issue. Again, the solution is just to create different orgs for each class and semester.

I'm currently working on a pretty extensive guide to using GHC from both an instructor and student perspective, so keep an eye out for that if you want more tips. Edit: guide is published

[farooqNU]

I also suffer from this issue. Have no option but to grant ownership to student TAs and hope they will not misuse it?

[jtc21am]

Is there an update to this ticket? We do not want to add TAs as Owners of the organization.

[farooqNU]

Nope

…

On Thu, 10 Apr 2025, 23:08 asha, ***@***.***> wrote: Is there an update to this ticket? We do not want to add TAs as Owners of the organization. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#57240 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A5P334QEJFRJSG3FIOBPJN32Y2XSBAVCNFSM6AAAAAB24J6CWCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTENZZGUYDOMA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mayurcodes01]

This is a common pain point with GitHub Classroom, and you’re not missing a hidden setting. What you’re describing isn’t fully supported today.

How GitHub Classroom permissions currently work

GitHub Classroom permissions are tightly coupled to GitHub organization roles, not per-classroom roles. In practice, that means:

Organization Owners can see and manage all classrooms

Non-owners (members or teams) have very limited or no visibility into classrooms

There is no built-in “TA” or “Instructor” role scoped to a single classroom

So unfortunately, giving TAs full visibility into only the classrooms they’re assigned to, without owner privileges, isn’t something Classroom supports right now.

What you can do today (workarounds)

Depending on how strict your requirements are, a few patterns are commonly used:

Separate organizations per classroom or course
This is the cleanest permission model.

Make TAs owners or admins in only the orgs they support

No cross-classroom visibility

Slightly more org overhead, but much clearer boundaries

Single org, multiple classrooms, limited TA role

Add TAs as org members (not owners)

Grant them access to student repositories via teams

They can grade and review repos, but won’t see full Classroom dashboards

Dedicated grading teams

Create one team per classroom

Auto-add student repos to that team

TAs interact only at the repo level

None of these perfectly match your request, but they avoid giving blanket owner access.

Why this is the case

GitHub Classroom was designed primarily for:

One org per course

A small number of trusted owners

Repo-level access for graders

Fine-grained, per-classroom administrative roles haven’t been implemented yet.

Recommendation

If TA isolation and visibility boundaries matter:

Use one organization per classroom or course

Treat Classroom “ownership” as course-level, not org-level

It’s more setup upfront, but it aligns best with how permissions actually work today.

This is a reasonable feature request, and you’re not the first to ask. It’s worth filing feedback with GitHub, but for now, this is a platform limitation rather than a configuration issue.