A study across 20 schools in three refugee camps in Chad's Sila region found children using the tablet-based numeracy game Can't Wait to Learn learned 50% more than peers in standard lessons, with girls closing an initial skills gap four times faster than boys.
50% more than comparison group
Learning gain vs comparison group (Nov 2021 - Mar 2022)
4 to 4.5 months
Time for girls to close numeracy gap with boys
800+ children, 20 schools
Study sample (Nov 2021 - Mar 2022)
Details
Promoter
War Child Holland / Jesuit Refugee Service / Ministry of Education and Civic Promotion (Chad)
Period
November 2021 – March 2022 (quasi-experimental evaluation); programme ongoing
Keywords
refugee education, adaptive learning, numeracy, tablet-based game learning, humanitarian EdTech
Context
Can't Wait to Learn (CWTL) is a tablet-based adaptive educational game developed by War Child Holland, delivering offline-capable, story-driven numeracy and literacy content for children whose schooling has been disrupted by conflict and displacement. In Chad's Sila region, the programme runs in refugee and host-community primary schools, implemented by War Child in partnership with Jesuit Refugee Service and Chad's Ministry of Education and Civic Promotion, with research support from GPE KIX and Canada's IDRC. Chad hosts around 1.3 million forcibly displaced people, and national data point to extremely low primary learning outcomes.
Activities
Between November 2021 and March 2022, researchers assessed numeracy competency, using the International Competency Assessment of Numeracy, among more than 800 children across 20 schools in the Djabal, Gos Amir and Goz Beida refugee camps. In 11 schools, Can't Wait to Learn replaced more than half of weekly numeracy lessons; the remaining 9 schools continued standard instruction and served as the comparison group.
Results
Children using Can't Wait to Learn learned 50% more than the comparison group over the study period. The effect was most pronounced for girls, who started with lower numeracy skills than boys but closed the gap within four to 4.5 months, learning roughly four times faster than boys during the study window.
Conclusions
The evaluation was a school-level comparison rather than a randomised trial, the assessed sample (800 children in 20 schools) is modest, and War Child itself has cautioned against 'one size fits all' scaling, noting results from one camp or country do not automatically transfer elsewhere without adaptation.
Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
War Child Holland programme and research staff, Jesuit Refugee Service, Chad Ministry of Education and Civic Promotion, GPE KIX / IDRC research support
Conditions for success
Offline-capable tablets suited to refugee-camp infrastructure constraints
Curriculum alignment with national numeracy standards
Substantial lesson-time reallocation (more than half of weekly numeracy lessons in intervention schools)
Common failure modes
War Child explicitly cautions against uncritical 'one size fits all' scaling to other camps or countries
No peer-reviewed statistical detail (effect sizes, confidence intervals) located beyond topline percentages
Where it fits
Governance type
NGO-led humanitarian programme with government partnership
Scale
regional, 20 schools in 3 refugee camps
Income level
low-income, fragile/humanitarian context (Chad)
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
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