Improving enrollment and learning through videos and mobiles: Experimental evidence from northern Nigeria

School enrollment and learning outcomes often lag far behind in settings where traditional social norms prevail. We present the main findings of a cluster randomized control trial that tested two components of a five-day intervention targeting 6-9-year-old children and their parents in northern Nigeria. These components consisted of community video screenings to reshape parental aspirations and attitudes towards education, and mobile literacy apps. After 12 months, community screenings decreased out-of-school children by 42 percent though did not improve learning outcomes. In half of the treatment communities, we provided an add-on where a 40 percent of attending households received a smartphone pre-loaded with gamified and digital library apps. This combined intervention increased literacy and numeracy skills by 0.46 and 0.63σ respectively. Learning impacts on boys and girls were similar in magnitude. The combined intervention had spillovers on non-targeted older children, where we observe an increase in literacy and numeracy skills of 0.34 and 0.47σ, and on adolescents a decrease in parenthood (13%) and early entry into the labor market (14%). Finally, using a standarized metric for reporting gains from education interventions, our results suggest that combining aspirational videos with engaging apps is a highly effective and cost-effective tool, a relevant finding for home-learning interventions targeting rural, low-literate communities that are governed by traditional social norms, where the evidence base remains scarce.