My focus here is on the question of whether the group as a whole can have such a thing as consciousness.
Why is there something it feels like to experience the bright red of a perfectly ripe tomato? In short, we need to explain why there is something it is like to be us, why we have phenomenal states at all, as opposed to merely functional states.
It should be clear that, just as human beings are capable of higher-order cognition, there is no barrier to a group’s being organized so as to engage in this sort of cognition too. Indeed, it should be possible to come up with functionalistically impeccable criteria for higher-order group cognition.