By Dan Fitzpatrick — Forbes contributor, three-time bestselling author on AI and education, founder of The AI Educator.
Start with three: TeachAid for planning, chalkd.Ai for first-pass marking, StaffDraft for the parent email you keep rewriting. Price is not what decides this in your first year — six of the seven tools below are free to start — it is where the data sits and whether students log in. Anything student-facing needs your school's sign-off before week one, and that is the only gate worth checking before you install anything.
| Tool | Job it does | Price (directory entry checked 5 October 2026) | Data hosting | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TeachAid | Builds ready-to-teach units to your curriculum | Freemium | United States | Your first scheme of work |
| Parlo | Assistant trained on national curriculum frameworks | Paid | European Union | Teaching outside England |
| Brainator | Turns a topic into printable worksheets | Freemium | United States | Cover work at short notice |
| chalkd.Ai | First-pass marking against your mark scheme | Freemium | European Union | Marking a class set on a Sunday |
| GradingPal | Rubric-based marking of structured assessment | Freemium | United States | Short-answer and quiz marking |
| StaffDraft | Drafts parent and staff messages in an educator voice | Freemium | United Kingdom | The behaviour email |
| SchoolAI | Student tutors with real-time teacher monitoring | Freemium | United States | Student-facing AI you can watch |
Pricing tiers are the directory's own fields, checked on 5 October 2026. What a paid plan actually costs you depends on whether your school buys it centrally, so confirm the figure with whoever signs your agreements.
Which AI tools should a new teacher actually start with?
One, not six. The new teachers I meet are not struggling with pedagogy; they are drowning in the doing. Research from the Walton Family Foundation, cited by Education Week, found teachers who use AI weekly save around 5.9 hours a week. For an ECT that is the difference between surviving September and enjoying it. Every tool here sits in the independent directory of AI tools for education, reviewed by working educators. Nobody pays for inclusion.
What should I use for lesson planning?
TeachAid builds complete, ready-to-teach units aligned to your curriculum, and it is the one I would hand a first-year teacher in September. Parlo is the pick if you teach to ACARA, CBSE or Ontario rather than the National Curriculum, and it is the only paid tool on this list. Brainator turns any topic into printable worksheets in seconds, which is what you want at 7am when a cover lesson lands on you. Compare the wider field before you commit to one.
Can AI mark my students' work?
First pass, yes. Final grade, no. chalkd.Ai takes student work in any format against your own mark scheme and hosts its data in the EU, which is the easier conversation with a UK data protection lead. GradingPal does the same job for structured assessment. The caveat I give every school I advise: AI marking is reliable for rubric-based tasks and unreliable on nuanced writing. Review every grade before it reaches your markbook.
What do I say in the difficult parent email?
The behaviour email is scarier in year one than any lesson observation. StaffDraft is a purpose-built ghostwriter for educators: it drafts the message in a professional voice, hosts in the UK, and you make it yours before it goes near send.
Is it safe to let my students use AI?
Only where you can see what they are doing. SchoolAI lets you create personalised tutors and learning spaces with real-time teacher monitoring, and it is rated 4.92 by educators in the directory. It is also the one tool here that students log into, so it is the one that needs your school's agreement first.
How do I choose without installing six tools?
Pick the task you dread, choose one tool, give it a half term. My rule, in every keynote and every school I work with: outsource the doing, not the thinking. AI drafts; you decide. Build that habit in year one and it shapes your whole career with this technology.
For the wider map rather than a starter kit, the 2026 field guide to AI tools for educators sorts the whole field by the job it does.
Your NQT year will still be hard. Your evenings do not have to be.
Last updated: 5 October 2026.
