ETIH Innovation Awards: Best Teacher Empowerment Tool shortlist tests real classroom impact
Tools designed to support teachers are being judged on whether they reduce workload while improving day-to-day practice and outcomes.
As part of the ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 category spotlight series, we are taking a closer look at the shortlisted entries across this year’s program. In its first year, the awards received over 140 entries, reflecting both the scale and pace of change across EdTech.
This category focuses on tools that help educators work more effectively through professional development, automation, and resource support, with winners set to be announced on May 11.
Where teacher support must translate into practice
The Best Teacher Empowerment Tool category covers platforms built to improve how teachers plan, deliver, and manage learning, and/or support teacher wellbeing. This includes tools for lesson creation, assessment workflows, professional development, and AI-driven automation that reduces administrative burden.
Judges are looking for clear evidence that these tools improve the working experience of teachers. This includes measurable reductions in workload, improved confidence, stronger consistency in teaching practice, and support for wellbeing. Platforms must show how they are used in real classrooms, not just what they claim to offer.
Finalists
Chalkie.ai is an AI platform that helps teachers create curriculum-aligned lesson resources in minutes instead of hours. Chalkie works worldwide and can align lessons to curriculums for America, Australia, UK, Ireland, Spain, Argentina and many more. In the first 12 months since launching, Chalkie has had over 500,000 teacher sign-ups, 40,000+ paying subscribers, 5 million+ lesson resources generated, getting $3.5M ARR in record time. Chalkie is addressing one of education’s biggest challenges: teacher burnout, while helping schools improve consistency, efficiency, and access to better teaching materials at scale. Teachers describe Chalkie as 'Magic' and 'life changing' because the of the quality of lesson resources it can produce.
CheckIT LMS is an AI-powered edtech ecosystem built to address student disengagement, reduce teacher overwhelm, and expand the role of AI beyond simple content automation. By merging neuroscience principles with advanced classroom management functionality, it helps create individualized learning experiences for K-12 students while simplifying lesson planning, scheduling, and grading for educators. With Cleo, a neuroscience-trained AI mentor, CheckIT LMS transforms decades of neuroscience research into actionable strategies, making learning meaningful, personal, and inspiring.
CheckIT LMS has a Responsibly Designed AI certification by Digital Promise and is committed to ensuring that technology honors children’s individuality and healthy brain development.
Tom Reynolds, a post-BA-diagnosed dyslexic and ‘Great British Entrepreneur of the Year’ finalist, is a passionate advocate for equitable and inclusive education. With over 20 years’ teaching and school leadership experience, Tom founded EdenFiftyOne - an award-winning technology platform deconstructing literacy into 51 universal skills. As a UK Education Advisor and university teacher-training lecturer, Tom bridges the gap between classroom practice and digital innovation. Central to the EdenFiftyOne platform and to Tom’s mission is ‘EFO’: a pedagogical AI assistant designed to democratize literacy skills education, providing teachers, leaders, learners, and parents with a technology-driven solution to level the literacy playing field.
Efekta Education (Addi AI Teaching Assistant)
Efekta's ground-breaking AI-powered teaching platform reduces teachers' administrative burden while amplifying their impact. Built on the world's largest English language learning dataset and decades of pedagogical expertise, the platform understands full classroom context, including each student's curriculum position, learning history, and performance patterns; to deliver precise, contextual recommendations for teachers.
Teachers can ask natural-language questions to gain insights that would otherwise take hours to uncover. This enables early interventions, targeted instruction, and more effective class time.
Efekta’s platform moves beyond generic AI assistance toward contextual instructional intelligence, significantly improving teacher productivity, confidence and well-being.
EdTool is an AI-powered teacher’s assistant and all-in-one platform that supports the full teaching cycle, helping teachers create interactive lessons and tests, assign work, analyze student progress, and personalize learning in one place.
Built by Learnetic, drawing on 20+ years of experience delivering 350+ education projects in 50+ countries, EdTool responds to real classroom needs with practical AI support.
Teachers can start with a prompt, PDF, or textbook photo, use 50,000+ ready-to-use STEM and SEN resources, and gain instant access to real-time results. With multilingual support, WCAG-compliant content, and flexible sharing, EdTool makes teaching more effective and inclusive.
Learning by Questions (LbQ) empowers teachers to teach smarter, not harder. By combining automated marking, adaptive learning, retrieval practice, and real-time diagnostics, LbQ reduces workload, strengthens pedagogy, and supports teacher wellbeing. Its flagship subscription for KS2, Wayfinder, provides actionable insights, helping teachers quickly identify misconceptions, group pupils, and plan targeted interventions.
Across 1,500 schools, 260 trusts and several LAs, over 2,000 teachers engage with LbQ weekly, generating 8.5 million pieces of pupil feedback, with 94% renewal rate. Grounded in research and designed with educators, LbQ integrates into daily teaching, making evidence-informed pedagogy practical, sustainable, and empowering for every teacher.
Reflective Intelligence (The Examina)
The Examina is a peer-facilitated social reflection game that helps educators reconnect with their professional purpose, their colleagues, and the moral core of their work. Structured around four sequential sessions, small peer groups move through guided conversations spanning long-term aspirations, short-term intentions, recent experiences, and formative stories. In a pilot across 10 public schools, 400+ educators participated; professional satisfaction rose 61% and intent to leave fell 25%. Independently evaluated by Boston College’s Purpose Lab and published in the Journal of Moral Education, the program requires no new curriculum, no outside consultant, and no additional time. It is peer-sustained and scalable.
Explore the full shortlist
You can explore the full ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 shortlist to see the companies and platforms shaping this year’s awards. Winners will be announced on May 11.
