Oak AI Lesson Assistant (Aila)
Code of Aila, Oak National Academy's AI assistant that drafts lessons, slides, quizzes and worksheets.
Aila's own codebase: a Next.js and Postgres monorepo built for Oak, public but not packaged for you.
This is the public code behind Aila, the AI lesson assistant from England's Oak National Academy. Teachers should use Oak's hosted Aila; the repo suits developers who want to study how a national curriculum body built an AI lesson tool.
What it is
Aila generates a lesson plan, slide deck, quizzes and a worksheet from Oak's curriculum-aligned content, according to Oak's own Aila site. The repository is a Turborepo monorepo (apps/nextjs and packages/aila among others) that runs a Next.js app on localhost:2525 against a Postgres database with pgvector.
Who it's for
It suits developers and education-technology teams who want a reference implementation of an AI lesson tool tied to a real curriculum. It does not suit a teacher or school who wants to install a lesson generator: the README says external users are not expected to run it and its instructions are written for Oak staff.
Key features
Lesson pack generation
Per Oak's Aila site, a full lesson is one plan, one slide deck, two quizzes and one worksheet, all editable and downloadable.
Curriculum-grounded content
Aila builds on Oak's national curriculum-aligned lesson content rather than free-form prompting alone.
Turborepo monorepo
The Next.js app and the Aila package live in one pnpm workspace, so the AI logic can be read separately from the web app.
pgvector database
A Docker script creates a Postgres database with pgvector, plus an option to seed only the tables the app needs.
Agentic system tooling
The aila package includes local failure-injection commands for its agentic system, documented in a manual file.
Jest and Playwright suites
Unit tests cover the app and aila package; Playwright tests are tagged so OpenAI-calling tests stay out of CI.
Up and running in 3 steps
Our honest verdict
What's great
- The code behind a publicly funded national curriculum body's AI lesson tool is open to read, which few education AI products offer.
- Oak's hosted Aila is described as freely available to teachers, so you can try the product without running any code.
- Release history shows an active semantic-release process with conventional commits, useful if you want to study how they ship.
- MIT code licence covers the codebase and sample code, so you can adapt the architecture in your own project.
Where it falls short
- The README says the project is for internal use and external users are not expected to run it; instructions are not written for outsiders.
- Running it needs Doppler for secrets, with access granted by Oak, so you must replace that with your own environment variables and API keys.
- You need Docker, pnpm, Postgres with pgvector and a model provider key; this is a developer setup, not an install.
- External code contributions are not accepted at present, and Oak trademarks and logos are excluded from the MIT licence.
Pricing & license
The code is MIT-licensed, so using it costs nothing beyond the infrastructure and model API fees you pay yourself. Oak's Aila site describes its hosted tools as freely available to teachers; no paid plan is shown there.
Open remote AI-training roles
870 open remote AI-training roles, updated November 14, 2026; most pay $20–$170 an hour. Zekai lists them free; the application goes to the employer’s platform.
Alternatives
These reviewed AI tools do the same job instantly — from our scored directory.
Use it, or have us set it up
FAQ
Can I install Aila for my school?
The README says the repository is for Oak's internal use and there is no expectation that outsiders run it. Teachers are pointed to Oak's hosted Aila at labs.thenational.academy, described there as freely available to teachers.
What does Aila produce?
According to Oak's Aila site, a full lesson contains one lesson plan, one slide deck, two quizzes and one worksheet, and it can also create glossaries, tasks and quizzes. It cannot create images or model diagrams.
What licence is the code under?
MIT for the codebase and sample code. Oak trademarks and logos are not covered, and documentation is under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
