On the Importance of a Safe School and Classroom Climate for Student Achievement in Reading Literacy

The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of safe school and classroom climate on students’ reading achievement at both individual and class level. In previous research there is a consensus that a safe and secure school climate is of importance for children’s ability to learn, but the empirical support for this belief is weak. The current analyses are based on Swedish grade 3 data from PIRLS 2001, using variables from both the teachers’, the schools’, the students’ and the parents’ reports of the social learning environment. A series of theoretically based two-level structural equation models was fitted to the observed indicators of school and classroom climate, and acceptable fit were found for a model with two latent constructs of Safety at each level. Significant and positive relationships with reading achievement were found at both the individual level and the classroom/school level. These results indicate that security plays an important role in explaining differences in reading achievement both within and between classes. In the final analysis the possibility to make causal inferences of the found relationships were investigated by including other known explanatory factors into the model. The result indicates that the effects of the climate factors on reading achievement were influenced by both student SES and teacher competence. At the within-level the effect was reduced, whilst at the between level the effect almost completely disappeared. Thus, positive school and classroom climate appears to a large degree to be a reflection social selection and teacher competence.