Canva Education, roles, and permissions
You can manage safe and effective collaboration in classrooms, schools, and campuses with Canva Education roles and permissions. Your role determines what you can access and do, whether you're a teacher setting up a class, an admin managing a district, or a student designing with peers.
Review education roles and responsibilities
- Team owner - Creates the team and has full control over settings, members, and deletion.
- Organization admin - Oversees all teams, users, and settings across an entire organization. Manages roles, integrations, and security.
- Organization brand designer - Creates and manages Brand Kits and Brand Templates across an entire organization. May have publishing and scheduling permissions.
- Team admin - Manages team-level members, content, and permissions, including Brand Kits and publishing settings.
- Teacher - Manages the team with control over content, classroom tools, and templates. Teachers can create classes, assign work, and access reporting.
- Student - Collaborates on shared content and creates designs, but has limited access to team settings or management. In some Canva Education teams, students may also need an admin to enable access to certain apps.
You can see everyone's roles from the People page in Settings. Team owners, admins, or organization admins assign roles and can changed at any time. If you don’t know who your organization's admin is, check this article.
Learn about the different roles and permissions for Canva Teams and Canva Enterprise.
Canva Education
When teachers sign up for Canva Education, they join a School team. School teams are shared Canva spaces where teachers and students can work on designs and class resources together.
Within a School team, teachers can create classes to organize students and manage assignments. Each class functions as a dedicated space where teachers can share resources, assign work, and collaborate with their students.
Responsibility | Team owner | Team admin | Teacher *available only for classes that belong to a School team | Student |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Created and can delete the team | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Manage members, settings, and team discovery | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
Manage Brand Controls | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
Access shared folders and designs shared with the team | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
For privacy reasons, students can't see group members or other students’ emails in Canva.
Student access to apps (Canva Education)
In Canva Education, access to some apps differs for students compared to teachers and admins. All social media and Generative AI apps are disabled by default for students. An admin will need to enable these apps before students can access them.
For Canva Education accounts:
- Students can use these apps only after a team owner or team admin enables them.
- Teachers and admins can access these apps regardless.
Enable student app access (Team admins)
- Go to Settings.
- Select Apps and integrations.
- Turn on the Manage apps for your team toggle.
- Select the apps that students should be allowed to access.
Note: Turning this setting on applies to all apps in your account. Any app you want students to access must be enabled from this menu.
Make your School team discoverable
You can make your school team publicly discoverable, so other teachers and students at your school can find and request to join it.
- From the homepage, go to your account profile, then select Settings.
- Select Controls.
- Under Team access tab, click the (drop-down icon) beside ‘Who can join this team?’ and select 'Anyone can request to join'.
- In the Confirm your school team details pop-up, add your school team details.
- Select Confirm.
Once your School team is discoverable, teachers and students can search for your school and request to join.
Tip: Your School team is private by default. Only make it discoverable if you want others at your school to find and join your team.
As the team owner, you'll get email notifications when someone wants to join your School team. You can accept or decline membership requests. You can also add another admin to help approve or reject requests.
Join an existing School team
You can join your school’s existing team. Use your school email address so teachers can find you more easily.
Before you start: If you're using a personal email address, switch it to your school email address first.
Get verified for Canva for Education
- Go to the teacher verification page: https://www.canva.com/edu-signup/
- Follow the prompts to complete verification.
After verification
- If your school has teams associated with your email domain, you may see options to join them.
- If no teams appear, ask your school team admin (or another teacher) to send you an invite link to join.
Troubleshooting
- If the expected team doesn’t appear, confirm your school email address is correct and matches the team’s domain.
- If the team is set to Invite only, ask a colleague at your school to invite you.
Link third-party accounts
You can link one third-party account per platform (such as Google or Microsoft) to your Canva Education account. If you previously had multiple accounts linked from the same platform, you can continue using them. However, if you unlink an account, you won't be able to reconnect it while another linked account from that platform remains active.
Canva for Districts
Canva for Districts is for schools and districts that manage accounts in one place. It provides secure, scalable collaboration using Single Sign-On (SSO) and admin controls across schools.
Responsibility | Organization admin | Organization brand designer | School team admin | Teacher | Student |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |
✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |
Manage members and settings | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
Manage Brand Controls | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (Teachers can publish Brand Templates for their class, not for the whole district) | ❌ | |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
Access shared folders and designs shared with the team | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Add comments to designs | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (default for K-12) |
Edit and delete comments | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (default for K-12) | ✅ (default for K-12) | ❌ (default for K-12) |
In some Canva Education teams, creating, editing, and managing Brand Kits is available only to the organization's brand designer role.
For privacy reasons, students can't see group members or other students' emails in Canva.
Canva for Campus
Canva for Campus provides both staff and student teams under a single organization. It offers a mix of Canva Enterprise and Canva Education-style controls.
Responsibility | Organization admin | Team admin | Student |
|---|---|---|---|
✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
Manage members and settings | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | |
Manage Brand Controls | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | |
✅ | ❌ | ❌ | |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
Access shared folders and designs shared with the team | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
What's the difference between a school team and a class?
A School team is the main collaborative space for your school in Canva Education. Within a School team, teachers can create classes to organize students and assignments. Think of the School team as your school's shared workspace, and classes as individual classrooms within it.
How do I join a school team if I'm already verified?
If you're already verified, ask your school's team owner or admin to invite you.
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