This report presents the findings of the Numeracy Enhancement Research and Development (NERD) pilot, which tested the Mama Math AI platform in six government primary schools in Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory. It documents the intervention's design, implementation, and evaluation, focusing on teacher professional development and learner numeracy outcomes.
This document is the learning report for the Numeracy Enhancement Research and Development (NERD) pilot, a program that tested the Mama Math AI-enabled numeracy platform in six government primary schools in Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory. It is written for education stakeholders, policymakers, and practitioners interested in foundational learning and technology-supported teacher professional development.
The report opens with an executive summary and project summary table, outlining the pilot's design: three intervention schools using Mama Math and three control schools, paired across rural, semi-urban, and urban settings. It reports learner assessments (278 at baseline, 352 at endline), teacher observations, and platform delivery data, including 197 uploads and 175 rounds of AI feedback.
The background section cites global and regional learning poverty statistics, including that 86% of children in sub-Saharan Africa fail minimum proficiency benchmarks. It explains the rationale for the pilot, referencing Nigeria's foundational learning challenges and the need for practical tools to detect learning gaps early.
The program design section details the two main components: teacher professional development (TPD) using the concrete-pictorial-abstract (CPA) method and the Mama Math platform. It describes how teachers photograph student work, receive AI analysis of errors, and access curriculum-aligned lesson plans and remediation steps, with features like a chatbot and caregiver communication tools.
The results section highlights significant improvements in teaching practice, with intervention teachers' observed practices rising from 5.7 to 18.3 out of 20, while control teachers stayed flat. Learner mean scores in intervention schools rose from 48.7% to 71.4%, and the share of pupils in the lowest grade bands fell from 54% to 11%. The report also notes challenges, including low caregiver engagement and a teacher strike, and concludes with recommendations for a larger rollout.