You’re likely already using AI. Here’s where we fit in

Last autumn term, 464 primary teachers in 108 schools let researchers into their planning. Half were randomly assigned to use Aila, our AI lesson assistant, which helps you plan lessons and make resources grounded in our national curriculum-aligned content. Half carried on as normal.

Ten weeks later, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) had an independent answer to a question we'd been asking ourselves: does it save teachers time, without costing lesson quality?

In short, yes it did. Teachers using Aila saved an average of 49 minutes a week on lesson planning, with no difference in lesson quality. Aila is, after all, safe by design and grounded in curriculum content written by teachers and subject experts.

And the trial backed up what we’d already seen about how teachers use AI day to day, which is why we’ve been evolving how we support you.

Where Aila helped you most

Teachers using Aila spent around 2.5 hours a week on planning and making resources, against 3.3 hours for teachers who weren't. Teachers who used Aila more saved more time. And the biggest gains went to teachers newer to the profession, or teaching a subject they felt less sure about.

For context, EEF's earlier trial of teachers using ChatGPT for planning found an average saving of 25 minutes a week.

One teacher in the trial used Aila to plan a grammar lesson on punctuation for speech, and said it helped them break the rules down into steps that stuck. After the lesson, they didn't have to keep reminding their pupils. The lesson, they said, “massively improved their writing”.

Another used Aila to re-plan a unit on Mayan history, with an existing Oak unit as the base. What helped most was using Aila to help determine the structure. As they put it, “actually thinking, what do I want this lesson to look like?” is the part that takes the longest.

Teachers using Aila were also about twice as likely to use our existing, human-made curriculum plans and resources as teachers who weren't using it. They weren't simply asking AI to generate something new. They were finding good starting points and building from them.

The trial is the most robust evidence type there is in education, and the EEF has high confidence in what it found. Very few AI tools have been tested this way. As a public body, we put Aila forward because we wanted to truly understand whether this technology helps teachers, and to publish what we found, good or bad, so the whole sector learns from it.

What changes for you

Testing Aila properly was part of our plan from day one. This trial ran in Autumn 2025. Aila has moved on since, and it’ll keep moving. These findings back up the direction we’d already taken: bringing AI to where you are.

93% of classroom teachers used AI tools in the last week¹. And the trial confirmed what we'd been seeing on our site: AI tends to get used inside the task you're already doing, not as a separate job. And often what you need isn't a whole lesson - it's a few more quiz questions, something to reinforce a tricky point, or a way to make an existing lesson land better with your pupils.

We built Aila for teachers starting with just a topic or a learning outcome in mind. That's a real need, and the trial shows Aila met it - teachers planning unfamiliar topics got the most from it. But most of the time you've already got something to hand: last year's plan, a unit from the shared drive, an Oak lesson.

So we're putting our effort into helping you to adapt with AI, not just start from scratch.

Bringing AI to where you already are

We launched Aila in 2024 on our separate AI experiments site. That gave us space to test something new without it sitting in the middle of the resources you already rely on.

Now we're bringing more of those capabilities into Oak itself.

You can use our ‘Create with AI’ feature alongside our lessons to make additional quizzes, comprehension tasks and glossaries. Thousands of teachers are already using it, around five times as much as the same feature inside Aila. It’s part of how Aila's capabilities are moving into Oak, rather than sitting in a separate place.

Next, we’re working on AI-powered scaffolding.

You'll be able to take an Oak lesson you're planning to teach and work with our AI to create extra support options for the pupils who need them, without leaving the lesson page. Like everything we make, the suggestions are grounded in the best available evidence about how pupils learn. It's the start of a bigger piece of work to help you adapt lessons for pupils with SEND.

We're also making it possible to use our curriculum plans and resources in the AI tools you already use. More on that soon.

You stay in the driving seat

How you access our AI might be changing. The principles behind it aren’t.

Everything on our site stays free. Our AI tools are grounded in national curriculum-aligned content written by teachers and subject experts, and they're held to the same safety checks and quality standards as everything else we make.

Most importantly, they're there to help you tailor content to your pupils and contexts, not to make decisions for you - you're the one who knows your pupils.

Look for the 'Create more with AI' button on our lesson pages.