Lesson planning using AI lesson assistant, Aila - A Teacher Choices Trial
06 October 2026
Oak National Academy’s Aila is an AI-powered lesson assistant that supports teachers with lesson planning and resource creation by generating curriculum-aligned materials from a specified lesson objective.
The Education Endowment Foundation commissioned NFER to evaluate the impact of Aila on teachers’ lesson planning workload. We used a school-randomised controlled trial, conducted over ten weeks during autumn term 2025, involving 464 Key Stage 2 teachers from 108 schools. Teachers in the Aila group were encouraged to use Aila while those in the non-Aila group were asked not to use it. Both groups could use other Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools.
Key Findings
- The lesson and resource preparation time spent by the Aila group was 76% of the time spent by the non-Aila group during the ten weeks of the trial. In this trial, teachers in the non-Aila group spent 3.3 hours per week preparing lessons and resources for their class, while teachers in the Aila group spent around 2.5 hours per week, saving 0.8 hours (or 48.6 minutes) per week on average.
- This reduction in teacher workload was evident without compromising the lesson resource quality: our analysis showed that the quality of the lesson resources in the Aila group was no worse than that in the non-Aila group.
- Teachers in the Aila group with lower confidence in their subject knowledge, lower pedagogical knowledge, those new to the profession or with higher confidence in technology were more likely to have a lower workload than similar teachers in the non-Aila group.
- Teachers in the Aila group saved time even though Aila was used for an average of 7% of lessons. Notably, usage frequency and amount both declined over the ten weeks.
- Teachers had mixed views about the Aila tool: while they found it to be accessible and curriculum-aligned, many preferred alternative GenAI tools which provided more ease of use, and Aila, by design, seeks to assist teachers through the planning process, requiring more involvement. This may also reflect a disconnect between Aila’s intended purpose of supporting lesson planning from scratch and teachers’ planning practices as well as perceptions that its outputs often required adaptation before being classroom ready.