School Context

School context is represented by three components: social composition and resources, school climate, and school discipline and safety. These components were measured by 11 indicators. School discipline problems, notably absenteeism and bullying, prevailed among large percentages of students in Middle Eastern schools particularly in fourth grade, and had strong negative association with performance in mathematics, science, and reading in TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA. Of school climate indicators, emphasis on academic success was strongly related to academic achievement. The differences in average scores between students in schools that emphasized academic success and those that did not were larger than those of the international average in most countries. Sense of school belonging had a statistically significant relationship to students’ performance in PISA and in TIMSS for fourth graders but not eighth graders. There was a strong statistical association between socioeconomic status of students and their average performance in mathematics, science, and reading in all tests. A moderate to strong association was found between early literacy and academic achievement for fourth graders. The association between shortages in school resources and academic achievement in TIMSS and PISA was neither consistent across countries nor significant in several of them, but in PIRLS, this association was consistent in most countries.