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Good practice Imported

Quechua Collao — A Randomised Trial of a Mobile App for Indigenous-Language Revitalisation in Peru

Peru · Cusco · See the Peru profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 55% 72/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A 2023-2025 randomised trial of the Quechua Collao app, run with Peru's Ministry of Education and the IDB in 200 Cusco/Puno schools, raised Quechua scores among 4,464 students by up to 8 points on app-taught content — though attitudes toward the language did not shift.

+4 percentage points
Overall Quechua score gain (2023-2025)
+8 percentage points
Score gain on app-taught content (2023-2025)
4,464
Students in trial
Quechua Collao — A Randomised Trial of a Mobile App for Indigenous-Language Revitalisation in Peru

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) and Peru's Ministry of Education
Period
2023-2025
Keywords
education, indigenous languages, mobile learning, language revitalisation

Context

Quechua Collao is a mobile app developed with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and OEI, working with Peru's Ministry of Education, to strengthen Quechua as a second language among sixth-grade and first-year-secondary students in 'Revitalise' and 'Urban' bilingual-education school models.

Activities

The app combines three entertainment modules (listening, reading, writing) used alongside in-class teacher-led sessions. IPA ran a randomised controlled trial across 200 rural and urban schools in Cusco and Puno, covering 4,464 students, from 2023 to 2025, with schools randomly assigned to receive the app or serve as a comparison group.

Results

Overall Quechua scores rose by 4 percentage points among app users, and scores on the specific topics taught in the app rose by 8 percentage points; students also reported using Quechua more in school, public spaces and their communities.

Conclusions

The evaluation found no significant shift in students' attitudes toward the Quechua language despite the usage gains, and results may not generalise beyond the 'Revitalise' and 'Urban' school types studied; no public evidence was found of continued funding for a wider rollout.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — IDB/OEI-funded RCT and app development; specific budget not disclosed.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Trial ran 2023-2025 across 200 schools.
Staffing & skills
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Peru Ministry of Education, IDB, OEI

Conditions for success

  • Randomised assignment enabling a credible counterfactual
  • Combining self-paced app content with in-class teacher-led sessions

Common failure modes

  • No significant shift in attitudes toward the language despite usage gains
  • No public evidence of continued funding for wider rollout beyond the study

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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