In development WordPress plugin
Attendance, parent comms and safeguarding for special needs schools
Free to start. Paid plans from £24.99 per month.
About the live demo
No login needed – give a name and email and you are in as a member of staff. A made-up school, shared with everyone else trying it.
Compare the plans, feature by feature ↓
Already a customer? Go to your account
Built for special needs schools and SEN provisions rather than adapted from a mainstream MIS. Attendance with DfE codes, one inbox for every parent conversation, and an event and incident log shaped around safeguarding workflows.
Pupil records and guardian contacts live on the school's own hosting, with encryption at rest, restricted access, backups and a documented retention policy – which matters when the data is this sensitive.
Features
Apps included
Attendance marked from a phone or tablet, working offline and opened with biometric sign-in – the corridor, not the office.
The family app. Parents and pupils message school from their phone and can send a photo with a message, and parents report an absence with the dates and a reason so the office hears straight away. New-message alerts can arrive even when the app is closed, and the school can give it its own name.
Countries
Lantern is available in the United Kingdom only, and in English, for now.
United KingdomSupport is provided from the UK, in English only.
Video guides
Short, narrated walk-throughs of each part, recorded on the live demo.
Plans & pricing
Start free and move up when you need to. Every plan keeps your data and settings exactly where they are.
Ordering opens shortly. Get in touch and we will set you up in the meantime.
Free forever
£24.99 per month
£49.98 per month
Available as soon as ModuleFest Lantern is live on WordPress.org.
Everything in Basic, plus more in Standard, plus more again in Premium.
| Feature | Basic Free forever | Standard Licence £24.99 per month | Premium Licence £49.98 per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pupils and families | |||
| Pupils, guardians, classes and groups | Included | Included | Included |
| Outcomes and targets for each pupil | Included | Included | Included |
| The Lantern Family app for parents and pupils | Included | Included | Included |
| Attendance | |||
| Attendance registers with DfE codes, from a phone or tablet | Included | Included | Included |
| Attendance reports and absences reported by parents | Included | Included | Included |
| New Attendance follow-up: the first-day absence call list, alerts below 90% and template messages | Not included | Included | Included |
| Evidence and safeguarding | |||
| Evidence vault for photos and files, with tags | Included | Included | Included |
| Incident log with a safeguarding workflow and DSL controls | Included | Included | Included |
| Copy message photos to your own S3 storage | Included | Included | Included |
| New Behaviour support plans, with restrictive-intervention records and debriefs | Not included | Included | Included |
| Serve photos from S3, freeing the school's server disk | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Messages and families | |||
| Parent messaging by email, SMS and WhatsApp, in one inbox | Included | Included | Included |
| Push notifications to Lantern Staff and Lantern Family | Included | Included | Included |
| New Home–school diary, shared with families in Lantern Family | Not included | Included | Included |
| Care and reviews | |||
| New Medication record: consent, doses given or refused, stock and expiry, a printable MAR | Not included | Included | Included |
| New EHCP and annual reviews: sections, linked outcomes, reminders and a printable review pack | Not included | Included | Included |
| Staff, timetable and cover | |||
| Staff records, roles, skills and cover | Included | Included | Included |
| Lantern Staff, the staff app, working offline | Included | Included | Included |
| Timetable planner: terms, A/B rotas, checks, printing and publishing to the apps | Not included | Included | Included |
| Staff absence register, with "Report absence" in Lantern Staff | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Uncovered-absence checks on the timetable | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Reports and data | |||
| Imports from CSV and Excel | Included | Included | Included |
| Report builder | Not included | Included | Included |
Changing plan never moves or deletes anything: dropping a plan hides its screens, and paying again brings them back as they were.
Coming to Premium: several schools in one Lantern, a therapy and interventions planner, staff training records, records retention for leavers, and safeguarding case files.
Texts and WhatsApp go through your own Twilio account (or an Android phone as a gateway), billed by them directly.
Have a look round the live demo. Every feature is switched on and it resets itself, so try anything you like.
About the live demo
No login needed – give a name and email and you are in as a member of staff. A made-up school, shared with everyone else trying it.
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