Faculty application rejected multiple times - photos flagged as duplicate despite being new

[BlurArt]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Verification Help & Guidance

Hi everyone,

Hi, I'm a verified teacher in Argentina (public school system, Buenos Aires Province) applying for the Faculty benefit. My school email (@abc.gob.ar) is already verified on my account.

My application has been rejected multiple times with the error "Photo has previously been used. Please upload a new photo" - even when uploading genuinely new screenshots/photos each time (different images, different content, taken minutes apart). I've tried:

• A payroll document showing my name and school
• An official government employee portal screenshot showing my teaching position
• A handwritten note signed and stamped by my school director

Each new upload gets flagged as "previously used" even though the files are different. I also got a separate rejection asking for the school's official URL, which I provided (school's Instagram page, as the school has no dedicated website).

Could someone from the GitHub Education team please review my application manually? My GitHub username is @BlurArt. Thank you!

[hoangperry]

The "Photo has previously been used" false positive is a known pain point, and the pattern in your description points at the likely trigger: screenshots of the same portals/documents look nearly identical to the similarity check, even when the files are technically new. The detector isn't hashing the file — it's comparing image content, so "different screenshot, same document, same framing" still matches.

What tends to break the loop:

1. Switch from screenshots to camera photos of physical documents. A photo of the printed payroll document or the stamped director's note — on a desk, natural angle, different background — is far less likely to collide than a portal screenshot.
2. One document per attempt, materially different each time. Re-submitting variations of the same evidence trains the detector to keep matching; alternate between distinct document types instead.
3. Space attempts out by ~24 hours. Rapid retries are themselves a rejection signal.
4. Before the next attempt, re-verify the basics the OCR also checks: your full name on the document matching your GitHub profile name exactly, the school name visible, and a date on the document from the last few months.

If it still flags after a genuinely fresh camera capture of a distinct document, escalate through the education-specific form at https://support.github.com/contact/education — that's the manual-review path; the community can't override the verification pipeline. Include the rejection message verbatim and note that the uploads were distinct files.