How MathsWatch’s Pedagogical Certification Accelerates School Decisions

Hear how MathsWatch has shortened trial periods, improved platform clarity and ease of use, and introduced new design features thanks to EdTech Impact’s Pedagogical Certification.

Background: MathsWatch

MathsWatch is a digital platform built by former teachers that combines video tutorials, interactive questions, and auto-marking to support Maths teaching and learning. 

In October 2024, the platform undertook EdTech Impact’s rigorous pedagogical evaluation, receiving a strong first-time score of “88%” for its pedagogical approach. This comfortably exceeded the global standard of 80% required to be certified, which is based on over 400 certifications to date.

In this case study, Co-Founder Hamid Rami shares how the certification led to new design priorities, challenged internal assumptions on what worked, and accelerated brand trust with schools – including helping to shorten school trial periods through third-party credibility.

Fresh Eyes and Honest Feedback

MathsWatch pursued EdTech Impact’s Quality Pedagogy Certification as a strategic check-in – a way to ensure the platform still reflected the realities of classroom teaching.

Originally created by three experienced maths teachers, the platform had always been grounded in day-to-day school life. But after several years away from the classroom, the team wanted to ensure it was still attuned to the subtle but important realities of teaching – the kind that evolve over time and only reveal themselves through continued classroom experience.

“After five, six, seven years away from the classroom, we were worried about starting to miss things”, explains Hamid. “We wanted that verification from outsiders – teachers who’d never seen the platform – to confirm that what we’re doing is still perfectly fine.”

To the MathsWatch team, certification offered a structured, external lens to test assumptions, surface blind spots, and identify areas for improvement.

Simpler Trials, Faster Decisions

One of the most powerful – and unexpected – outcomes of the certification was its effect on conversations with schools.

As former teachers, the MathsWatch team had always found it easy to build rapport with educators. But the Quality Pedagogy Certification added something new: independent, third-party validation that gave schools immediate confidence in the platform’s foundations.

That confidence has changed the nature of procurement conversations, enabling sales discussions to focus solely on whether it was the right fit for a school’s specific needs – a shift that has led to shorter trial periods and faster sales decisions.

“That stamp of certification tells schools it’s been externally checked”, Hamid shares. “It simplifies the discussion, and it simplifies them trialling it. They verify a couple of things to make sure it hits what they’re looking for, and then the discussion can move forward.“

Uncovering Development Priorities

Hamid’s team have extensively used the certification report to shape their product development roadmap.

While MatchsWatch had long focused on academic rigour and teacher workload, the evaluation highlighted three missing dimensions: student well-being, motivation, and autonomy.

This wasn’t something users typically raised. It took the certification’s external evaluators – experienced Maths educators with an impartial, outside lens – to surface these insights for Hamid and the MathsWatch team.

“The evaluation report clearly identified the need for us to think about the well-being of students, so we really, really spent a lot of time trying to improve this aspect”, he explains. “This meant thinking about how we can develop students’ autonomy a bit more, and how we can develop different rewards for students to get a good sense of the work they are doing.”

In response, MathsWatch introduced new features, such as a monthly reward system and class leaderboards – helping students feel a greater sense of ownership, especially when working independently. 

Without evaluation, these improvements may not have happened.

Reframing Assumptions

The certification process didn’t just highlight new opportunities – it prompted the MathsWatch team to rethink core assumptions about their platform.

Several features the team had long considered self-explanatory were flagged by evaluators as unclear, sparking a re-evaluation of how parts of the platform were presented to users.

“Just the discussion process was really, really interesting – and worthwhile on its own”, Hamid reveals. “They were asking questions about things we thought self-explanatory, and we realised, oh, hold on, we assume anyone looking at our platform would understand how it works, when in actuality they clearly don’t.”

These conversations set in motion the team’s internal review of where the user experience could be improved, laying the groundwork for the final report – delivered at the end of the evaluation – to provide the structure, clarity, and detailed guidance needed to take confident, corrective action.

Looking Ahead

For the MathsWatch team, the certification wasn’t a finish line, it was a benchmark. It marked the beginning of an ongoing commitment to external evaluation that now informs how they plan, prioritise, and measure progress.

Their initial score was strong, but the team is already working through the full set of recommendations with a clear goal: to return to the next evaluation with an even stronger result they can shout about to their customers. 

“Our score was pretty high already, but there is that motivation of looking at the recommendations from the report, working on them, and seeing if, within a year, we can improve our score.”

In that sense, the certification has become more than a quality mark. It now serves as a framework for ongoing development – bringing structure, accountability, and strategic direction for the whole team to get behind.

Conclusion

MathsWatch entered the certification process with a clear goal: to test whether their platform still reflected the realities of classroom teaching. What followed went beyond validation.

The certification accelerated trust with schools, reduced sales cycles, challenged internal assumptions, and introduced new design priorities that now shape the platform’s trajectory.

Beyond a quality mark, it has become a tool for focus, accountability, and ongoing improvement for Hamid and his team – keeping MathsWatch closely aligned with the needs of modern schools.