Resources · For schools · Verified Aug 2026
Free Turnkey AI Curriculum for Schools: The 2026 Catalogue
There are genuinely free, turnkey AI curricula schools can adopt today — CodeAI’s AI Foundations and Day of AI’s PreK-12 curriculum are the strongest — plus free lesson libraries from ORISE. Here is what each includes, verified against the vendors’ own pages in August 2026, and where free materials stop.
Every claim below links to the provider’s own page · Last verified 31 August 2026.
Which free AI curricula are truly turnkey?
CodeAI — AI Foundations (Grades 9-12)
A 100% free, full-year pathway in two semesters (“Exploring AI and CS”, then “Designing and Building with AI”), roughly 90 class periods per semester with month-long mix-and-match units. Includes lesson plans, slide decks, assessments and rubrics, self-paced professional learning, progress tracking and an AI Teaching Assistant. Free account required. No prior experience needed. Source. Middle school: AI Discoveries covers Grades 6-8, also free (code.org/ai).
Day of AI (MIT RAISE) — PreK-12 AI literacy curriculum
A grade-by-grade PreK-12 curriculum whose full ladder launched 19 August 2026 (the “nation’s first” label is their own claim). Their FAQ states: “All course curricula and professional development videos are completely free and will remain free”, under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, and units “can be run over a day, a week, or integrated throughout the year”. Free registration to download; per-unit lesson counts and hours are not published, so timetable planning takes some work. Curriculum · FAQ · MIT RAISE
ORISE — free AI lesson plans (no registration)
Nine free, directly downloadable AI lesson plans spanning Grades 5-12 — including “Predicting with Probability” (5-8), “Developing a Classroom AI Policy” (6-12), “Evaluating AI Output” (6-12) and “Ethical Usage of AI” (8-12) — plus an “AI Resources for K-12 Education” teacher resource book. These are standalone teacher-submitted PDFs, not a sequenced curriculum. Source
Which listicle favourites are dead links now?
AI4ALL Open Learning is still recommended by third-party lists (Digital Promise, AI4K12, California Educators Together), but Open Learning no longer appears on AI4ALL’s site and its curriculum URLs return 404 (as of 31 August 2026); we found no official discontinuation announcement. Check before building a term plan around any older listicle’s links — ai-4-all.org.
What don’t the free options include?
Honest answer: less than vendors like us usually imply. CodeAI even includes progress tracking. The real differences are format and coverage: AI Foundations is Grades 9-12 only; Day of AI publishes no per-unit hour counts and its licence is non-commercial; ORISE is one-off PDFs rather than a sequence. All are teacher-delivered classroom materials — none offers a 540-chapter self-paced student sequence with a built-in in-browser Python lab.
If you want that format, you don’t have to take our word — the first chapters are free, no card, no call, and per-student licensing is published: $45 / $36 / $30 / custom on the pricing page. Many schools run a free curriculum for classroom teaching and a platform for practice — the two are complements, not rivals. See also the middle school and high school bands and the enrichment comparison.
Bring this curriculum to your school
LittleAIMaster runs structured AI lessons for Grades 6-12 — 540+ chapters, teacher dashboards, and per-student progress visibility. The app is freemium, so your teachers can test the first chapters free before any conversation about seat licensing.
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