Can't Wait to Learn — First Cluster-Randomised Trial of War Child's Adaptive Learning Game, Isingiro, Uganda

Can't Wait to Learn (CWTL) is War Child Holland's tablet-based adaptive learning game for children whose education has been disrupted. Uganda's Isingiro District, in the country's southwest near the Nakivale refugee settlement, hosted the programme's first cluster-randomised controlled trial (cRCT), funded by GPE KIX and run by War Child's research team together with Uganda's Ministry of Education and Sports.

Over 18 months, researchers followed 1,507 children across 30 primary schools. Schools were randomly assigned so that roughly half replaced part of their regular English and mathematics lessons with CWTL sessions — about 28% of weekly maths lessons and 25% of literacy lessons — while the other half continued standard instruction as the control arm.

War Child and GPE KIX describe the trial as evidence that CWTL 'not only performs better than standard education but also better than most EdTech programmes used in similar settings,' framing it as the milestone that turned CWTL into a fully evidence-based programme. A companion Value for Money analysis of the Uganda programme was published via GPE KIX in September 2024.

At the time of reporting, detailed statistical results (effect sizes, confidence intervals) had not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal — War Child stated these were forthcoming. This entry is therefore scored as a strong-design, pending-full-publication result rather than a fully documented RCT outcome, though the pre-registered cluster-randomised design is a methodological step up from most digital-learning evaluations in similar low-resource settings.