We study the determinants of educational participation and gender differences in education for young children in six Arab countries: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Although these countries have made much progress in getting young children into school, school dropout after age 11 was still very high, and in the rural areas there were major gender differences in participation. In cities of most of these countries (except Yemen) gender differences have almost disappeared. Multivariate analyses show that similar household-level factors (e.g. wealth, education, number of siblings) as those in the West play a role, but that their importance relative to context factors is much less. For young rural girls, only 33 per cent of the variation in participation is explained by household-level factors. For older and urban girls and for boys this is more, but still substantially less than in the West. Strengthening the position of rural mothers and improving the educational infrastructure seem particularly important for reducing gender differences.