Quality of Life and Attendance in Elementary Schools. Establishing Classroom Environments Where Students and Teachers Want to Be, Educational Outcomes are Enhanced, and Students are Led to a Broader Life Experience

But the results of the recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study ranked Saudi students forty-third out of forty-five (Saudi Arabia was even behind Botswana, which was forty-second).19 While the average student-teacher ratio in the GCC is 12 to 1БЂ”one of the worldБЂ™s lowest, comparing favorably with an average of 17 to 1 in OECD countriesБЂ”it has had no real positive effect. Unfortunately, international evidence suggests that low student-teacher ratios correlate poorly with strong student performance and are far less important than the quality of the teachers. But the education ministries in most Arab countries do not measure teacher performance. Inputs are easier to measure, through a methodology of standardization. Focusing on the number of teachers has particularly harmful implications for boys in the Arab world. Many government schools are segregated by gender: boys are taught by men, girls by women. Since teaching positions have traditionally been less appealing to men, there is a shortage of teachers for boys ...»