This project is no longer recruiting.

What is Aila?

Oak National Academy’s Aila is an AI-powered lesson assistant designed to support teachers with lesson planning and resource creation whilst keeping the teacher, as the expert, in the driving seat. Aila has been designed using the latest research in pedagogy and cognitive science to ensure the outputs generated are both rigorous and aligned to the national curriculum. The tool incorporates a number of safety protocols to ensure the content produced is appropriate for UK classrooms.

Who is leading this project?

Aila is a product developed by Oak National Academy, a teaching and learning resource available across all curriculum subjects from primary through to Key Stage 4. Oak provides free access to thousands of resources that help practitioners to prepare high quality teaching and support planning at every level – from curriculum design to lessons. Aila launched in September 2024 and draws on an extensive library of Oak content, created and quality assured by teachers and subject experts.

The EEF has commissioned a team from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to evaluate this trial. The NFER project team will coordinate the trial directly with participating schools.

What will this project look like in your setting?

Schools that sign up for this trial will be allocated to one of the two randomised groups by NFER – the ​‘Aila group’ or ​‘Non-Aila group’. Teachers in both groups will be asked to:

• Prepare their normal lessons and resources for Year 3, 4, 5, or 6 classes for ten weeks in the autumn term 2025. All teachers will be asked to avoid using the main Oak National Academy website during the trial. Those in the Aila group will be asked to use Aila to support their lesson preparation,while those in the non-Aila group should not use Aila.
• Complete a brief weekly online diary during the 10-week trial to provide data on the number of hours spent and the sources used in lesson planning and resource preparation.
• Complete an online survey in September 2025, December 2025 and March 2026 about time spent preparing lessons, attitudes to technology and pedagogical approaches.

NFER will contact all teachers during the trial and invite them to share a small selection of lesson plans and resources that they have used to teach during the trial period. Schools that complete all the weekly diaries and share lesson plans can receive a payment of up to £130 per participating teacher at the end of the trial.

Who can take part?

All state-funded mainstream schools with Years 3 – 6 are eligible if they are not currently using Aila. In addition, participating teachers must:

• Have teaching and lesson planning responsibilities during the autumn term 2025, for any subjects in Year 3, 4, 5 or 6
• Not currently use Aila for lesson planning. This includes teachers who are already using Aila to plan lessons at least once per half term.
• Plan to create at least some lesson resources from scratch during the trial period and must not intend to use primarily pre-prepared or established curriculum resources for teaching.

Teachers may use existing resources (including Oak resources and other AI tools) but should not to use the Oak website to generate new resources during the autumn term. Teachers who share class teaching responsibilities – for example, those who job-share or work part time – remain eligible.

Teaching professionals are increasingly seeking robust and accessible evidence of educational technology (EdTech) product effectiveness, particularly GenAI in schools. Although GenAI has the potential to reduce teacher workload, effective implementation and quality assurance support are needed to ensure any potential negative consequences on teaching practice and pupil outcomes are dealt with.

To address this evidence gap, the EEF recently commissioned and published results on a rapid Teacher Choices trial on the use of GenAI (ChatGPT) in lesson planning, examining its impact on KS3 Science teacher workload. The evaluation generated promising findings, where teachers who used ChatGPT for lesson preparation spent an average of 56.2 minutes per week, compared to 81.5 minutes for those not using GenAI – a 31% time saving. However, this trial tested a general-purpose chatbot without rigorous pedagogical customisation. There remains an evidence gap surrounding the impacts of using a GenAI tool that is specifically designed to plan for lesson quality and pupil learning.

Few programmes offer GenAI training and implementation support for teachers. Aila enables flexible lesson planning but is not a structured programme with formal training, thereby lending itself well to a Teacher Choices trial.

This project will be evaluated through a two-armed Teacher Choices randomised controlled trialAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes.. The trial will assess the impact of Aila on the average teacher time spent lesson planning for KS2 classes using a weekly teacher time diary. Drawing from a sample of lesson resources collected from teachers in both arms, and independent panel of teachers will also assess the average quality of lesson resources in both groups.

An implementation and process evaluationAn IPE is used to understand how and why an intervention has (or has not) been successful. Data is analysed to explore programme quality, reach, adaptation and differentiation, as well as setting fidelity and responsiveness to the trial design. will be conducted alongside the impact evaluation to explore teacher implementation experiences with using Aila as well as differences in impact according to teacher expertise, technological, pedagogical and subject knowledge.