Published on June 11, 2025 – Updated on June 11, 2025

J-PAL just awarded a funding to Rida Ali Khan to conduct a RCT trial in a selection of Pakistanis' rural elementary schools


Rida Ali Khan
Cerdi, Université Cleront Auvergne

J-PAL recently awarded a research funding to Rida Ali Khan, a PhD student at the Université Clermont Auvergne and CERDI, to conduct a study on numerical skills in elementary schools in Pakistan. The purpose of the study is to conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of mental math on numerical competency and cognitive abilities in public elementary schools. 

The study will be a cluster-RCT at the school level, evaluating the impact of a Mental Math intervention designed to strengthen numerical skills and cognitive abilities among primary school students. The intervention will focus on practicing the four basic math operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, through engaging mental exercises. 

A total of 60 rural public primary schools will be randomly assigned to either the treatment group (30 schools) or the control group (30 schools). The intervention will run for 24 weeks, preceded by baseline testing and followed by endline testing to measure the effects. 

The main objective of this study is to improve numerical competency and cognitive functioning among children in public primary schools.