If you’ve been sent a link to Busy Things and hit a login screen you don’t recognise, you’re not alone. LGfL changed how people sign in a while back, and a lot of the printed instructions still floating around schools, in reading record books and on old class newsletters, only cover the login method that used to be the only option. This guide covers what’s actually on the login page today, what each option is for, and what to do when none of it seems to work.

Everything below is checked directly against the current pages on busythings.co.uk and lgfl.net rather than copied from a school PDF or a forum post, and the source links are included so you can verify anything for yourself. Where something depends on your specific school’s setup rather than being universal, that’s flagged explicitly, because a lot of the confusion around Busy Things comes from generic advice being applied to school-specific configurations.

Table of Contents

What Is Busy Things?

Busy Things is a browser-based educational resource for children aged 3 to 11, used widely by primary school teachers across England, built around games, interactive activities and downloadable resources that map onto the primary curriculum. It covers Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, and the site is responsive, so it works whether a child is on a school desktop, a tablet at home or a phone.

The subject range is wider than most people expect. Alongside the obvious literacy and maths content, Busy Things covers art, citizenship, design, geography, history, ICT, languages, music, PE, religious education and science. A Year 2 teacher might use it for a phonics game one lesson and a map-reading activity the next.

The content is built by a team of teacher consultants and mapped against the 2014 Primary and EYFS curricula, which is part of why so many schools use it as a genuine teaching tool rather than just a reward at the end of the week.

It’s useful to know before you rely on it: the platform is entirely browser-based, so there’s no offline mode for a car journey or a patchy wifi spot, and like any curriculum-linked game platform, it’s designed to supplement classroom teaching rather than replace it. A maths game that reinforces subtraction is genuinely useful, but it’s not a substitute for a child struggling with a concept getting one-to-one help.

What Is LGfL Busy Things?

LGfL Busy Things is the version of the Busy Things learning platform that schools access through their LGfL subscription, rather than a separate standalone product. LGfL stands for London Grid for Learning, a charity that supplies broadband, safeguarding tools and curriculum resources to schools. Despite the name, LGfL now works with schools well beyond London. Busy Things is one of the resources delivered through an LGfL subscription, and it’s consistently one of the most used, with LGfL reporting over a million page turns from schools every month (their own term for the number of individual games and activities opened).

LGfL is a registered charity (charity number 1090412), which you can check directly on the Charity Commission for England and Wales register if you want to verify who’s actually behind the service before handing over a child’s details.

Because Busy Things comes bundled into an LGfL subscription rather than being sold on its own, access always starts with your school. If your school has LGfL and has activated Busy Things, staff and pupils get logins set up for them. If your school isn’t an LGfL school, or hasn’t switched Busy Things on, there’s no login to find, because it hasn’t been provisioned.

This is a meaningful limitation compared with consumer learning apps that let a parent sign up directly with a card payment. There’s no public sign-up form for Busy Things, no individual subscription option, and no route in for a home-educating family whose school isn’t LGfL-connected. If your school doesn’t offer it, asking Busy Things directly won’t get you a login, because the account has to originate from the school’s own LGfL provisioning.

Busy Things Login: How to Sign In

Head to the official login page at busythings.co.uk/lgfl-login. You’ll see six sign-in options, not one, and which one applies to you depends on what your school has set up.

Log in with Busy Things ID. A dedicated Busy Things account, separate from any school system login. Some schools set these up directly for pupils or staff.

Sign in with Google. Uses a Google account the school already provides, often the same one pupils use for Google Classroom or school email.

Sign in with Microsoft. The Microsoft equivalent, tied to a school Microsoft 365 account.

Normal USO Login. The original LGfL single sign-on system. Still fully supported, still widely used, particularly in schools that haven’t switched to Google or Microsoft accounts.

Easy Login. Designed for Early Years and younger pupils who can’t reliably type a full username and password. It uses a simplified sign-in screen rather than a standard login form.

Who Am I Login. A separate identity lookup route, useful in schools where pupils know who they are within the system but not their exact login string.

A teacher login unlocks the Teacher Tools area; a pupil login doesn’t, so the two aren’t interchangeable even when they use the same sign-in method. A school doesn’t have to pick just one. LGfL’s own guidance for schools suggests mixing methods, for example using Easy Login for EYFS and Year 1, and moving older pupils onto Google or Microsoft once they can manage a proper login. So it’s entirely normal for two children at the same school, or even in the same family, to be looking at different login screens.

How the methods actually compare:

Normal USO Login doesn’t depend on any other account existing, and it’s the longest-established option, so it tends to be the most consistently understood by ICT coordinators. The downside is it’s one more username and password for a child or parent to keep track of, separate from anything else the school uses.
Google and Microsoft sign-in are convenient precisely because they reuse an account pupils may already log into daily for Google Classroom or Microsoft 365. The downside is more moving parts: the school has to complete a separate authentication step before it works at all, adding a point of failure that pure USO doesn’t have.
Busy Things ID stands entirely apart from school infrastructure, which can make it more resilient if a school’s wider systems are having issues, but it’s yet another standalone credential for someone to remember and reset.
Easy Login solves a real problem (a four-year-old can’t reliably type a password), but by design it’s a lighter-weight, more guessable route into an account, so it makes sense for supervised classroom use rather than as a security-conscious choice for unsupervised home access.
Who Am I Login is useful when a pupil knows their identity within the system but not their exact login string, though it depends on the school having that identity data set up correctly in the first place.

For a school choosing between these, there’s no single “best” option. A school with strong Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 adoption gains real convenience from reusing those accounts. A school that’s never used SSO integrations beyond USO may find sticking with Normal USO Login, or adding Busy Things ID for younger pupils, less to maintain.

It’s easy to assume every child in a family, or even every child in one class, uses the same login method, but mixed setups are the norm rather than the exception. The first troubleshooting step should always be confirming which method a specific child was actually given, rather than retrying the one that worked for an older sibling.

How to Access Busy Things Through LGfL

For pupils and parents, access always flows through the school:

Go to the login page (busythings.co.uk/lgfl-login).
Choose the login method your school has told you to use. If you’re not sure, that’s a question for the class teacher, not a guess.
Enter the credentials the school issued, whether that’s a USO username and password, a Google or Microsoft school account, or a Busy Things ID.

For teachers and ICT coordinators setting things up for the first time, or switching a school over from USO-only, LGfL has a separate setup route through busythings.co.uk/lgfl_uso_migration, which walks through configuring Google, Microsoft or Busy Things-hosted logins for staff and pupils.

One thing worth knowing: having an LGfL subscription doesn’t automatically mean Busy Things is switched on and ready. It has to be actively provisioned, and staff and pupil logins have to be created, before anyone can sign in.

A typical real-world scenario: a parent with two children at the same primary school finds that the Reception child logs in through a simple Easy Login screen with no typing required, while the Year 4 sibling uses a full Google sign-in through their school email address. Both are correct. The confusion usually isn’t a broken login, it’s two different (and both entirely valid) systems running side by side because the school has staged the rollout by age group, exactly as LGfL’s own guidance recommends.

Is Busy Things Still Using LGfL USO Login?

Yes. Normal USO Login is still on the page and still works exactly as it always has. What’s changed is that it’s no longer the only route in.

For years, USO was the sole way to reach Busy Things, which is why so many school handouts, PDFs sent home and old blog posts only describe a USO-based process (click the red LGfL logo, choose Normal USO Login, enter a username that includes a school code). If you’re working from one of those, it isn’t wrong exactly, it’s just incomplete. LGfL has since added Google sign-in, Microsoft sign-in, a standalone Busy Things ID, an Easy Login for younger children, and a Who Am I Login for identity lookups.

If your school has moved away from USO, or is in the process of doing so, that’s a deliberate migration, not a fault. LGfL’s migration guidance page explains the change to schools directly: logging into Busy Things is described as becoming easier thanks to the addition of Google and Microsoft account options alongside USO, and schools are encouraged to use whichever mix suits their different age groups.

So if you’ve been told “use your USO login” and that no longer works, the most likely explanation is that your school has switched some or all pupils onto a different method, and the instructions you have are just out of date.

Offering six parallel sign-in routes on one login page is unusual for school software. Most platforms in this space standardise on a single sign-on method and expect the school to route everyone through it. LGfL’s decision to run USO, Google, Microsoft, Busy Things ID, Easy Login and Who Am I Login side by side looks like a direct response to how uneven schools’ underlying IT setups actually are, rather than a tidy technical choice. The practical upshot for anyone searching for login help is that generic instructions found online are less reliable here than for most school platforms, because there genuinely isn’t one universal answer.

Busy Things Login Not Working? Common Solutions

If a Busy Things login isn’t working, it almost always comes down to one of three things: the wrong credentials, a Google or Microsoft account the school hasn’t authenticated yet, or the wrong login option chosen from the six on offer.

You don’t know your username or password

This is the single most common issue, and the fix isn’t to contact Busy Things support first. Credentials are issued by the school, not by Busy Things itself, so a class teacher or the school’s ICT coordinator is who actually holds that information. Parents in particular should go straight to the class teacher, since that’s the route LGfL itself points to.

Google or Microsoft login won’t authenticate

If Sign in with Google or Sign in with Microsoft isn’t working, especially from home, there’s a specific reason for this. Schools have to complete an authentication step for Google and Microsoft logins to work, and that step has to be done while connected to the school’s own network. If a school hasn’t done this yet, Google and Microsoft sign-in simply won’t authenticate anywhere, home included, until the school’s IT contact runs that setup.

You’re on the wrong login option

With six choices on one page, it’s easy to click the wrong one out of habit, especially if a family has children at different schools or in different year groups using different methods. If USO login isn’t working, it’s worth double-checking with the school whether that child has actually moved onto Google, Microsoft or Busy Things ID instead.

Still stuck

Busy Things provides direct support for login issues: phone 01332 364963, or email lgfl@busythings.co.uk. This is separate from your school and worth contacting once you’ve ruled out “I just don’t have the right credentials,” which the school, not Busy Things support, will need to resolve.

The order worth trying things in

Confirm with the school which of the six methods this specific child has been given (not what worked for a sibling, and not what worked last year).
If it’s Google or Microsoft and it fails away from school, treat that as expected until the school confirms the network authentication step has been completed.
Only contact Busy Things support directly once you’re confident you have the right method and the right credentials, and something is still visibly broken on the platform itself.

Mistakes worth avoiding: contacting Busy Things support before checking with the school wastes time, since support can’t issue or reset school-managed credentials. Equally, repeatedly retrying the same login with slightly different guesses at a username or password is unlikely to help and, depending on how the account is configured, may not be any faster than simply asking the class teacher directly.

What Can Children Do on Busy Things?

Once logged in, pupils land on a welcome screen split by age band, from which they can pick games, interactive worksheets and quizzes. The maths section includes the Miner Birds series, where children answer questions correctly to collect worms, with versions covering addition, subtraction and other calculation types across ages 5 to 11. There are also KS2 quizzes covering areas like grammar (nouns, verbs, subjects and objects) and cross-curricular topics such as the Tudors, all of which can be assigned by a teacher and completed independently, with results visible back to staff.

Not everything is available to pupils by design. The Teacher Tools area, which includes a resource maker and search tools for building custom content, is only accessible with a staff login. So if a parent is logged in on a pupil-level account and can’t find certain features, that’s usually intentional rather than a fault.

As an example of how this plays out day to day: a teacher might assign a KS2 grammar quiz on Monday morning as a starter activity, see which pupils scored below a certain threshold by lunchtime through the Teacher Tools progress view, and follow up with a small group later that week. A parent logging into the same child’s account at home would see the quiz and the score, but wouldn’t see the class-wide breakdown, because that view is restricted to the staff login layer.

One limitation to flag honestly: games and quizzes are good for practice and reinforcement, but the platform can’t diagnose why a child is getting something wrong the way a teacher watching them work can. It’s a practice tool, not a substitute for teacher-led assessment.

Who Is Busy Things Designed For?

Busy Things covers ages 3 to 11, spanning EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, but the login setup treats three groups differently:

Pupils get logins matched to their age and ability, whether that’s a full USO or Google account for a Year 5 child or an Easy Login screen for a Reception pupil who can’t type a password yet.

Teachers and staff get logins with access to the Teacher Tools area, assignment features and resource creation, none of which pupil accounts can see.

Parents use the same login credentials issued to their child (not a separate parent account) to support learning at home, which is explicitly permitted under Busy Things’ own licensing terms for families at LGfL-connected schools.

What Subjects Does Busy Things Cover?

The full published subject list is: Art, Citizenship, Design, English, Geography, History, ICT, Languages, Mathematics, Music, PE, Religion and Science. In practice this means a school might use Busy Things for a phonics game in a literacy lesson on Monday, a times tables quiz on Tuesday, and a geography activity on Wednesday, all through the same account and interface.

EYFS staff tend to lean on the phonics and number activities, while KS2 teachers make more use of the subject-specific quiz banks alongside the core literacy and maths content. That range across a single account is a big part of why it gets used so heavily across a school week rather than just for one subject.

Busy Things for Teachers and Schools

Setting Busy Things up for a class starts with logins. Since it stores user-generated content (saved work, quiz results, custom resources), pupils and staff each need their own login rather than sharing one class account. LGfL’s migration guidance page is the place to start if a school is setting Busy Things up for the first time, or moving off USO-only access onto Google, Microsoft or Busy Things-hosted logins.

Inside the platform, the Teacher Tools area is where staff handle assignments, resource-building and progress tracking: setting quizzes, reviewing how pupils are doing, building custom resources, and applying seasonal or topical theme backgrounds to the interface. Assignments can be set across any age band from within this area, which is useful for mixed-ability classes working at different Busy Things levels.

On licensing, the terms are reasonably specific. Content can be downloaded and edited for use within the school community, including being viewed by parents, but it can’t be republished outside that environment, and LGfL or content-provider branding can’t be stripped out. Any school planning to reuse Busy Things material beyond the platform itself, for example on a class website or newsletter, should check this first.

This is more restrictive than content released under an open licence such as Creative Commons, where reuse and redistribution terms are explicit and broader. The trade-off is that a subscription resource like this comes with dedicated teacher-consultant-built content mapped to the curriculum, rather than a crowdsourced library of variable quality. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends on whether a school values curriculum alignment over flexibility to redistribute material.

For a school still deciding whether to migrate off USO-only access: staying on USO alone means less setup work now, since it’s already configured, but it also means missing out on the convenience of pupils reusing accounts they already log into for other tools, and it keeps the school dependent on families remembering a Busy Things-specific credential. Migrating to include Google or Microsoft options adds an upfront authentication step for IT staff to complete, but tends to reduce “forgotten password” queries longer term, since pupils are reusing logins they already use daily. There’s no need to migrate everyone at once. LGfL’s own guidance explicitly supports a mixed approach, so a phased rollout by year group is a reasonable, low-risk way to test it.

Can You Use Busy Things at Home?

Yes. Busy Things is designed to work at home as well as in school, using the same login the school has already issued. This isn’t an unofficial workaround either. Busy Things’ own licensing terms specifically carve out an exception for parents at LGfL-connected schools, encouraging them to log in alongside their children to support learning outside the classroom.

The practical requirement is that the school has to have actually enabled home access and issued working credentials, which for Google or Microsoft logins means the school has already completed its network-side authentication step. If a login that works fine in the classroom stops working at home, that authentication step, rather than anything wrong with the child’s account, is the most likely cause.

A common mistake here is assuming that because a login works on a school laptop, it will automatically work from a home browser too. Google and Microsoft sign-in specifically depend on a setup step that has nothing to do with the device and everything to do with whether the school’s own network has completed authentication. Testing a login only ever at school, then being surprised it fails at home, is one of the more avoidable sources of frustration in this whole system.

Frequently Asked Questions About Busy Things

Is Busy Things free to use?

Not on its own. Access comes through a school’s LGfL subscription, which the school pays for. Individual families and pupils don’t sign up or pay directly.

Do I need my school’s permission to use Busy Things at home?

You need the school to have issued you working login credentials and enabled home access, but once that’s in place, using it at home with your child is explicitly encouraged under the platform’s own terms.

What age group is Busy Things best for?

It’s built for ages 3 to 11 across EYFS, KS1 and KS2, with content and difficulty adjusted by age band, and teachers can move a child to a lower age band than their actual year group if that suits them better.

What’s the difference between USO login, Google login and Busy Things ID?

They’re three separate authentication systems that all lead to the same Busy Things account once you’re in. USO is LGfL’s own long-standing single sign-on. Google and Microsoft use school accounts a pupil may already have for other tools. Busy Things ID is a standalone account created specifically for Busy Things and isn’t tied to any of the others.

Why does Google or Microsoft login say it isn’t authenticated?

Because the school hasn’t yet completed the required authentication step on its own network. Until that’s done, Google and Microsoft sign-in won’t work from anywhere, including school computers, not just from home.

Can teachers assign work through Busy Things?

Yes. The Teacher Tools area lets staff set quizzes and assignments across any age band, and see how individual pupils are progressing.

Who do I contact for technical support with Busy Things?

For a lost username or password, contact the child’s class teacher or the school’s ICT coordinator first, since credentials are issued by the school. For a genuine platform fault, Busy Things support can be reached on 01332 364963 or lgfl@busythings.co.uk.

Can siblings share one Busy Things login?

Each pupil is normally issued their own login, since the platform saves individual progress, quiz results and user-generated content that would get muddled between two children sharing one account.

Sources

This guide draws directly on the following official pages, checked at the time of writing:

Busy Things LGfL login page: busythings.co.uk/lgfl-login
LGfL Busy Things resource page: lgfl.net/services/BusyThings
LGfL Busy Things Migration Guidance: lgfl.net/teaching/busy-things-migration-guidance
LGfL charity registration: searchable via the Charity Commission for England and Wales, charity number 1090412

Login systems and provisioning details can change as LGfL and Busy Things update their platforms, and individual school configurations vary. If something here doesn’t match what you’re seeing on screen, your school’s own IT contact is the most reliable source for how your specific setup works, since school-level configuration isn’t something an outside guide can see or verify.