The Effects of School Safety on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Rwanda, Tanzania, & Zambia

This environment can be threatened by internal threats such as bullying, corporal punishment, and gang recruitment, external threats such as attacks on schools, and environmental threats such as natural disasters. All these threats have the potential to significantly decrease students' academic performance. Research has pointed to a connection between school environments and student outcomes, but much remains unknown about the effect of perceived school safety on learning. A growing body of research suggests that a safe learning environment is crucial for students' academic achievement. In developing countries, more quantitative analysis of the relationship between school safety and student performance is needed. The study aims to identify the causal direction and magnitudes of student and teacher perception of safety on learning outcomes in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia through a quasi-experimental analysis. The researchers gathered information from three USAID assessments: the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA), and the Snapshot of School Management Effectiveness (SSME). The key dependent variables are standardized learning outcomes in English, reading fluency, and math addition problems. The researchers conducted an Ordinary Least Squares estimation to explore the determinants of student performance when controlled for school and family-specific characteristics. These results were then verified using a quasi-experimental method that employed a Propensity Score Matching technique. This allows for the conditions of a randomized experiment of the control groups on school safety and academic performance. A Doubly Robust Estimator was used to account for any misspecifications in the treatment or outcome models. The study found negative effects of an unsafe school environment on learning outcomes for reading and math in all estimation procedures of Rwandan students who self-reported their perception of school safety. For 6th grade math evaluations, a student who feels unsafe solves seven fewer addition problems correctly per minute compared to peers who feel safe at school. For 4th grade math evaluations, the difference is about two problems per minute when compared to students of similar characteristics who only differ through the perception of school safety. Head teacher-reported school safety also showed negative effects on learning outcomes in Tanzania. Quasi-experimental estimation shows that Tanzanian students who reportedly had an unsafe learning environment solved 0.7 fewer problems correctly per minute in math addition. English reading fluency is significantly affected, with students who experience an unsafe environment reading about eight fewer words per minute than comparable peers. The presence of security guards in unsafe school environments is found to reduce the negative consequence on 2nd grade math outcomes in Tanzania. In Zambia, the research showed no statistically significant effects of school safety when reported on by a head teacher, except for 3rd grade English reading. The quasi-experimental estimations show an 11% reduction from the average performance in English evaluations. Perceptions of unsafe school environments are correlated with lower learning outcomes. Donors, policymakers, and other education stakeholders need to consider school safety issues as a barrier to learning in policy design and program implementation. There is a need for more standardized measurement tools and more research to measure how threats to school safety affect performance and how these threats vary across sex, age, region, and other attributes. Alternative research approaches are needed to evaluate the impact of school safety on student achievement. A longitudinal or experimental approach will enable researchers and policymakers to understand the effect of specific policies and programs implemented to enhance student academic performance.