Chalkie AI Review for UK Schools: Is It Free, and Is It Any Good?

Chalkie AI turns a topic into a full lesson slideshow in under a minute, and more UK teachers are asking about it every week. Here is what it does well, where to be careful, whether it is free, and how it compares with the tools you may already have.

What is Chalkie AI?

Chalkie is an AI lesson planner. You enter a topic, a year group, a subject and your curriculum, and it generates a complete, editable lesson slideshow — learning objectives, key vocabulary, teaching slides and activities. The company says lessons can be aligned to the national curriculum in England as well as the curricula in Scotland and Wales, and exported to PowerPoint, Google Slides or PDF.

That output format is Chalkie's main selling point. Many AI tools give you a block of text you then have to turn into slides yourself. Chalkie skips that step.

What Chalkie does well

• Speed to a usable first draft. A structured slideshow in under a minute is a real head start for a busy week.
• Curriculum framing. Choosing year group and curriculum up front keeps the pitch closer to UK expectations than a general chatbot.
• Differentiation. It can produce scaffolded and stretched versions of activities, which saves the double-planning that differentiation usually means.
• Editing in plain English. You can ask it to add a slide or simplify an activity rather than rebuilding it by hand.

Where to be careful

• Accuracy still needs checking. Like every AI planner, Chalkie can produce confident mistakes — particularly on facts, dates and subject-specific terminology. Read every slide before you teach it.
• Your scheme of work comes first. A generated lesson does not know what your class learned last week or what your school's curriculum sequence is. Use it to speed up planning you have already sequenced, not to replace the sequence.
• No pupil data. Lesson planning should never need pupil names or personal information, so keep it that way.

Is Chalkie AI free?

Chalkie offers a free way to try it, with no card required, which is enough to test a few lessons in your subject. Beyond that, Chalkie offers paid plans for individuals, and the company says school pricing is flexible — based on school size, number of staff or multi-school group arrangements. Prices and free allowances change, so check Chalkie's own pricing page for current figures.

Searches for Chalkie promo codes are common. Treat third-party "promo code" sites with caution; if you want a better deal, ask Chalkie directly about school or trust pricing.

Chalkie vs Oak Aila vs TeachMate

If your school wants one free planning tool, start with Aila — it is backed by Oak National Academy and costs nothing. If staff want polished slides quickly, Chalkie is a strong option to test alongside it. For the wider picture, see our guide to the best AI lesson plan generators for UK teachers.

Should your school approve Chalkie?

For lesson planning with no pupil data, Chalkie is a relatively low-risk tool. The approval steps are still worth doing properly:

1. Check the company's privacy policy and where data is processed.
2. Add it to your list of approved tools in your AI policy.
3. Tell staff clearly: planning content only, no pupil information.

A worked example: Year 5 geography

To test a tool like Chalkie fairly, try a lesson you know well. Say you ask for a Year 5 geography lesson on rivers, second in a unit, for the national curriculum in England. A good result should give you:

• A clear objective — for example, describing the main features of a river from source to mouth.
• Key vocabulary — source, tributary, meander, estuary, mouth — with child-friendly definitions.
• A retrieval starter linked to the first lesson.
• An explanation sequence with diagrams or image prompts.
• A practice task and a short check for understanding.

Then check it as you would a colleague's lesson. Are definitions accurate? Is the practice task long enough? Would your lower attainers need a scaffold? The ten minutes you spend editing is where the lesson becomes yours.

How to get better results from Chalkie

• Be specific about prior learning — "pupils already know the water cycle" changes the pitch.
• Name the misconceptions you expect so they are addressed on the slides.
• Ask for less text per slide if the first draft is wordy.
• Request a scaffolded version of the main task for pupils who need it.
• Export and save to your shared drive so colleagues can reuse and improve it.

Who gets the most from it

Chalkie tends to suit early career teachers building a bank of resources, teachers covering unfamiliar subjects, and anyone teaching a topic for the first time. Experienced teachers with strong existing resources often use it more selectively — for a new topic, or to refresh a tired lesson.