in these three countries, reaching historically low records, between 1.2 and 1.5 standard deviations below the world’s historical average. In Morocco, as well, school safety dropped dramatically between 2007 and 2011, although school safety tends to be a persistent issue in Morocco and the situation has since improved slightly.<sup>5</sup> School safety also declined significantly in Lebanon (-0.4), the Islamic Republic of Iran (-0.1) and Turkey (-0.4), between 2007 and 2011, which have to varying degrees been impacted by political instability and spillover effects from neighboring countries. School safety is quite degraded in the Gulf countries, Jordan and Morocco, but trends remain steady between 2011 and 2015.

Analyzing the determinants of school safety across countries confirms that, even after considering social background, population density and socioeconomic factors, MENA schools tend to be less safe compared to other regions. Furthermore, an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition indicates that sociodemographic factors, including educational possessions, age, gender, and urbanization levels explain around one-third of the gap in school safety between MENA and other countries.<sup>6</sup> Thus, school safety is not determined by socioeconomic background of students. School safety is reduced as the share of children from affluent background decreases in a given school. On average, a school with 50 percent or more children from affluent backgrounds enjoy a safety index around 25 percent of a standard deviation higher. And while the connection between school safety and socioeconomic background is positive, it remains much weaker than the connection between students’ performance and socioeconomic background. On average, socioeconomic factors and demography explain only around 10 percent of the variance in school safety, but around 51 percent of the variance between student performance in mathematics and science.

School safety and disciplinary climate however may vary with urbanization _._ School safety tends to be lower in urban and densely populated areas and higher in remote rural areas (Figure 3). Once country differences in urbanization level and socioeconomic status are accounted for, the relation between population density and school safety is quite continuous in MENA. All other things equal, safety tends to deteriorate as population density increases. On average, school safety tends to be around 25 percent of a standard deviation better in remote rural schools than in schools located in densely populated areas. This suggests that the level of urbanization plays a substantial role. Additionally, analysis of the classroom disciplinary climate index confirms that disciplinary climate is also on average better in rural areas than in large cities.

Gender composition of the school matters for disciplinary climate, as climate tends to deteriorate as the share of boys increases. On average, as the share of girls rises from 0 to 100 percent, the disciplinary climate measured at the school level increases by 0.25 standard deviation. The impact of gender composition on disciplinary climate is also positive.

> 5 The school safety index went down by 0.7 standard deviation.

> 6 See the appendix for details.

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