Children who played an educational computer game at the start of every school day have shown a dramatic improvement in maths, concentration and even how they get on with other pupils, a Scottish study has shown.

A pilot project at a primary school in Dundee found that a group of 30 pupils who played a selection of games including number challenges, reading tests and memory puzzles, showed a marked improvement in maths tests over a 10-week period.

The P5 and P6 children from St Columba's Primary, who played the games on a handheld console for 20 minutes every day, improved their maths scores by an average of 10 percentage points.

Children who had low scores in the first place did particularly well and one learning support pupil jumped from a score of 25% to 68%.

The average time for completion of the test by the group using the games, called More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima for the Nintendo DS console, dropped from 17 minutes to 13 minutes and 19 seconds. Some of the children halved the time it took to complete the test while maintaining or improving their score.

Derek Robertson, technology for learning development officer with Learning and Teaching Scotland, said the improvement was "particularly significant".

Although the pupils no longer use the consoles in school they are more "cohesive, comfortable with each other and supportive" than equivalent pupils in previous years.

Stella Andrews, the headteacher of St Columba's, was also impressed with the impact that playing the game had on her pupils.

"It set an atmosphere of learning in a calm and peaceful way. I have never seen that level of concentration and quiet. They are really into it and it wasn't like that before," she said. "It seemed to make learning fun and cool."