I assume you are using version 2.4.x or higher. If you don't, these instructions may not work.

I think you could create a group for each class. The group would contain both the class teacher(s) and the students. The teacher needs to have a higher user level than the students.
OK, if you create a group you get a screen with the group's properties. You can change them all if you want, but you need to choose "Depending on each blog's permissions" or "View all blogs" for the Blogging permissions -> Blogs setting.
That's the non blog-specific part.

After you've done that, create a blog for each class and enable advanced permissions for it (Blog settings -> Features tab -> Multiple authors -> Use advanced perms). Then go to the Group perms tab in the blog's settings and give the group you created for this blog appropriate permissions (using the advanced mode). For the "Edit posts/user level" field, choose "< own level" or, if you have multiple teachers for one class and want them to be able to edit each others posts, "<= own level".

I think this should work; if you don't understand this explanation, tell me and I will try to explain it better.

Thanks Tblue,

I will try and follow what you explaied first and if I get stuck I will be back.
And if anyone has more to say on this please speak up I am open to any and all sugestions. THis is just a first try for me so the subject is not closed.

Use 2 maybe 3 browsers when you tinker with Group Permissions. One is for you as "The Admin" in the admin group, another you log in as a teacher (presumably in the teachers group), and finally you log in as a student in what would assume would be the 'students' group.

That is a really easy way to see how wiggling this or that knob affects what each group experiences.

EDIT: yeah that would be 3 browsers. Not 2 or 3. duh...

Thanks for the good idea I will try that and see how "tweaking" goes. If ther are other teachers or shcools wanting to do this here let me know who you are and I will post my results for others.

Sorry this is big but I forgot to tell you each student and teacher needs their own blog. I might have made it sound like the class has just one blog and all contribute to it. So each student and teacher has their own blog page and the teacher can manage the pages and posts.

DON'T YELL AT US!
So you have a group for each class. The only member of that group is the teacher, and that group gets high level permissions.

Each student has a blog, of which they AND the class-specific-group are members. Each student is in the "students" group because everyone is in a group, but that group has no permissions. Instead you use the "User permissions" subtab to give low level permissions to each student in their individual blog. Exclude the permission to "post published" and then they can't do that.

Each class has one "mother blog". That one has all student blogs aggregated into it, and the teacher has permissions to post into it without restriction. The class-specific-group has full permissions for everything. Now when the teacher visits the back office and checks the "mother blog" he/she will see everything the students have as work in progress. Students should be taught to use 'draft' if it is not ready for teacher approval, and 'protected' when it is.

Students should also be taught to walk 5 miles uphill to school in the snow and get used to not having any summer recess. And to get off my lawn! Just sayin'

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This is much easier to do than discuss. I should get in the habit of screen-cap videos and just show peeps how this stuff works. Except I'm so old-school I'm still using v2.4.7
:roll:

recap: 4 classes with 10 students each.
At the blog level you will have this:
- 40 student blogs, each with a student member and a 'class' group member.
- 4 class blogs, each with a 'class' group member and 10 blogs aggregated into it.
- maybe one school-wide or grade-wide blog? This would have everything aggregated into it but wouldn't have any actual members.

At the group level this:
- 4 class groups, with high level permissions and only one member - the teacher.
- maybe 1 'administrators' group? This would be someone to fix whatever someone else breaks while traversing the learning curve.

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No matter how much I try to write this stuff it never seems to come out as clean as it does when you just click through stuff. Oh well eh?

Sorry for yelling I am a teacher it is a bad habbit. I will try this and get back to you.

Thanks so much!