QEDA Deploys AI ‘Mama Maths’ to Help Teachers Tackle Pupils’ Maths Gaps

Funmi Ogundare Quality Education Development Associates (QEDA) Wednesday concluded an eight-week pilot of ‘Mama Maths’, an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered Mathematics learning platform designed to help teachers identify pupils’ learning gaps and provide targeted, step-by-step support. The pilot, implemented under QEDA’s Numeracy Enhancement, Research and Development (NERD) project, was conducted in six Nigerian schools and focused on grade two pupils, with the broader objective of improving numeracy outcomes through technology-supported teaching and remediation. The initiative, implemented in partnership with Ebase Africa, ran from March to August 2026 and involved three intervention schools and three control schools across urban, semi-urban and rural communities. Speaking virtually, Senior Programme Officer, QEDA, Gabriel Okechukwu Sylvester, said Mama Maths was designed and contextualised to fit the Nigerian grade two curriculum rather than introduce content outside the country’s approved learning framework. Beyond helping pupils, he stated that the platform was designed to ease some of the demands faced by teachers, particularly in lesson planning. “The app will also help them in lesson planning for any topic you want to teach. You just type it on the platform. It gives you a lesson plan for that topic, with a step-by-step guide on how you are going to teach it,” he said. He explained that the project placed considerable emphasis on preparing teachers to use the technology effectively, with participating teachers undergoing intensive training before the classroom intervention. According to him, the training covered pedagogical approaches such as the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) method and the ‘I do, We do, You do’ model, as well as ethical considerations in the use of AI. While the participating teachers received three days of training, Sylvester said an earlier SSU programme had involved four days of training. He added that the project adopted activity-based learning and provided teachers with continuous support through school visits and a WhatsApp community of practice, where they could share challenges and receive guidance. The project team, he said, initially planned only two school support visits during the eight-week intervention but increased the frequency to weekly visits after observing the need for sustained assistance. “We felt that going to the schools continuously would help the teachers improve more. It was not easy, but we had to do it,” he said. Sylvester said instructional materials were also supplied to participating schools to complement the digital platform and provide pupils with opportunities for hands-on learning. Parental engagement, he added, formed another component of the intervention, with caregivers invited to orientation sessions and given assignments that enabled them to reinforce learning at home. Also speaking, the Project Manager, Ebase Africa, Tatianne Ambang, noted that the pilot was primarily designed to examine how Mama Maths could support teachers in the classroom, particularly in lesson planning and the teaching of grade two Mathematics. She said the pilot was not yet focused on establishing the platform’s overall academic impact, but on determining its feasibility and acceptability before a broader assessment of its effect on learners’ achievement. According to Ambang, the application enables teachers to capture pupils’ written work and upload it to the platform, which analyses the work and provides targeted remediation based on the learning difficulties identified. “For this particular pilot, we are looking at how it can support especially grade two teachers in class and for them to be able to use this app to support their learners,” she stated. Ambang explained that the pilot also featured MATHSLAB sessions, during which teachers used the application to regroup pupils according to their learning needs, capture their work and upload it for analysis. She stated that feedback from the pilot indicated that teachers were able to generate lesson plans through the application, while the platform’s content had been adapted to reflect the Nigerian curriculum, particularly at the grade two level. The technology, she added, could also extend learning support beyond the classroom by providing caregivers with information on pupils’ progress and assignments that could be completed at home. The project manager stated: “The approach was intended to create a support system involving teachers, learners and caregivers, with teachers receiving information to address specific learning gaps, while parents were given opportunities to monitor and reinforce their children’s learning.” The next phase of the initiative, she noted, would focus on examining the platform’s impact on learners after the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention had been established through the pilot.