LanternReport Writer

Frequently asked questions

The questions schools ask first.

Straight answers on data safety, voice matching, who stays in control, accuracy, setup, AI training and cost, the things that actually decide whether Lantern is right for your school.

Is our students' data safe?

Yes. Data protection is the first thing we designed, not an afterthought. All student and report data lives on Australian infrastructure (AWS Sydney, with disaster recovery in Melbourne) and never leaves the country. It is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is scoped to your school, and every view and change is written to an immutable audit trail. There are no student accounts: students never log in and have no profiles; they exist only as names on their teacher’s class roster.

The full detail is on our security and privacy pages, both written for the people on your IT and compliance committees.

Will it really sound like my teacher?

That’s the whole point. Lantern builds a Writing Profile from a teacher’s own past reports, capturing their openers, their warmth, the way they frame a next step, and carries that voice through every draft. It is not a “formal / friendly” tone dropdown: it is a readable profile of how that specific teacher writes, and different classes can carry different voices.

If a teacher has no past reports to hand, a short guided wizard captures their style from scratch in a few minutes. The profile rebuilds over time as their writing evolves.

Is the teacher still in control and responsible for the report?

Always. Lantern is a drafting and checking assistant, never the author of record. The teacher remains the author and the approver: nothing is finalised, exported or shared until they have read it and signed off. They can edit any draft freely, accept or reject every suggestion, and the final words are theirs.

Professional judgement stays with the professional. Lantern speeds up the typing and the rule-checking; it does not replace the teacher’s knowledge of the child.

Could it invent things about a student?

Lantern drafts strictly from what the teacher gives it: their typed or dictated notes about that student, plus the school’s reporting rules. It does not pull in facts from anywhere else.

As an extra safeguard, the compliance check flags any claim in a draft that isn’t grounded in the teacher’s notes and surfaces it for their judgement. It is never silently rewritten or quietly accepted. The teacher decides whether the wording is fair and true before it goes anywhere.

How hard is it to set up and integrate?

Getting started is light. A teacher can write their first voice-matched, compliant comment in a single sitting. Bring a past report and your reporting policy and you’ll see a draft in minutes. There is no student data import required to begin, because students are just names on a class roster.

[PLACEHOLDER: integration specifics, supported single sign-on, student information system connections, CSV import, and the typical onboarding timeline]

Tell us your environment in a demo and we’ll map the rollout to your school.

Is using Lantern academically and professionally legitimate?

Yes. Lantern works from the teacher’s own observations and notes and produces them in the teacher’s own voice, checked against the school’s own reporting policy. The teacher reviews, edits and approves every comment, so the report remains an authentic, accountable professional judgement, the same standard expected of a report typed by hand.

Schools that aren’t ready for AI drafting at all can run Lantern as a compliance checker only: upload comments written anywhere and get per-comment findings with suggested fixes, with no generation.

Is our data used to train AI models?

No. Your reports, student notes and prompts are never used to train AI models, and prompts are not retained for that purpose. This is a contractual commitment with our AI providers, not just a setting. The drafting and checking run on enterprise AI infrastructure pinned to Australian regions, with no overseas brokers in the path.

What does it cost?

Lantern is priced for whole schools and the figures depend on your size and how you intend to use it. See our pricing page for the current plans, or book a demo and we’ll put together a quote for your school.

Which AI providers process our data?

We publish the list. Lantern relies on a small number of vetted sub-processors for AI drafting, checking and hosting, each bound by the same data-handling terms: Australian-region processing, no model training on your data, and no retention of prompts.

The current list, and what each one does, is on our sub-processors page.

What happens to our data if we leave?

Your reports are yours. You can export comments to DOCX, PDF or CSV at any time. When you ask us to delete your data, it is purged within 30 days, in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, and the deletion is recorded in the audit trail.

Still weighing it up? The security, privacy and sub-processors pages go deeper for your IT and compliance committees, and a demo answers the rest.

Got a question we haven’t answered?

Prefer email? Write to hello@embereducation.com.au and a real person will get back to you.