Case timeline and approval flow
A tangible interaction model for testing how evidence, drafts and decisions should sit together.
Design partnership · UK schools
The MIS holds the record.
It doesn’t hold the whole story.
Lyceum Labs is designing the working layer around school systems: turning family communication and staff knowledge into structured, human-approved support workflows for attendance and inclusion.
Working prototypeIn design-partner validation
SYSTEM OF RECORDMISAttendance · contacts · codes
FAMILY“The reason is more complex”
STAFFContext from today
APPROVALRoute with judgement
The operational gap
The difficult work happens between records, conversations and decisions.
Attendance and inclusion teams already have dashboards and statutory records. The friction lives in what happens next: who knows what, who contacts whom, what was learned, what needs approval and whether that context survives the handover.
“Around the MIS, not instead of it.”Design constraint / 001
Tracer workflow
From unexplained absence to an evidence trail people can trust.
We are starting narrow enough to learn properly: one recurring workflow, followed across family contact, barrier capture, human review and follow-up.
- 01
A signal arrives
An unexplained absence, family message or staff observation enters the day’s work.
- 02
Context is assembled
Relevant contact history, cohort context and staff knowledge are brought beside the MIS record.
- 03
A person chooses the action
The system can draft and route. Staff review before contact, coding, escalation or handover.
- 04
The evidence stays coherent
What was learned, agreed and tried remains visible for the next conversation and review.
What exists today
A working concept, deliberately short of a finished platform.
School policy and team fit
Roles, thresholds, safeguarding handovers and MIS touchpoints must be learned with real teams.
Broader inclusion workflows
Only after the attendance tracer proves useful: support reviews, provision evidence and cross-team handovers.
Non-negotiables
Human-approved
No consequential contact, code, escalation or safeguarding judgement is delegated invisibly.
Context with provenance
Source, time and author remain attached so a neat summary never outranks the underlying evidence.
Designed around practice
The workflow must reduce duplication for the people doing the work, not produce another executive dashboard.
Bounded by trust
Least access, explicit retention and data minimisation are product behaviour—not procurement appendices.
Outcome discipline
We will measure whether the workflow improves practice—not whether it creates activity.
These are validation aims for design partners, not claimed results. Baselines and success thresholds will be agreed before any pilot.
Less context reconstructed by hand
Test whether the evidence needed for review is easier to find and attribute.
Decisions remain reviewable
Test whether approval, rationale and handover are clearer to the next person.
Work around the MIS, not against it
Test whether the tracer removes duplication without creating a shadow record.
Design with us
Help shape the workflow before it hardens into software.
We’re looking for a small number of schools and trusts willing to examine one real operational pattern with us. The first conversation is about fit, constraints and what must be true—not a product demo.
Read the partnership brief