From
The BBC» There is a striking overlap between places in England with slow public transport and places with struggling secondary schools, say researchers.
Instead of only looking at education data, researchers compared schools using journey times from the Department for Transport.
They found clusters of bad transport and underachieving schools in places such as Norfolk and north-east England.
Even in richer areas, poor transport seemed linked to lower school results.
A long article (worth a full read) ... I picked out
This is not how long it takes pupils to get to school - but how well their local communities are served by buses and trains.
This found that badly connected places were more likely to have low-achieving secondary schools.
The measurements used are journey-time statistics from the Department for Transport, which show how long it takes by public transport to reach a major centre for employment.
The average travel time is 33 minutes - and the researcher's analysis shows how school results seem to worsen as journey times stretch beyond this.
The slow connections are not just the end-of-the line towns on the coast, it can affect the edges of big cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Newcastle, and pockets of Kent and the south west.
In the geography of the last general election, this study from SchoolDash shows the places with poor transport and under-performing schools were the seats where voters swung to the Conservatives.
These are areas where social mobility is held up by a lack of physical mobility.
* University choices decided by cost of train fares
* Poor pupils in London get more university places than rich outside capital
* School grades linked to where you live
* Why are coastal schools at such a low ebb?
Simon Burgess, a professor in the economics of education from the University of Bristol, says there is never going to be any "one-cause" explanation for the pattern of schools doing well or badly.
But he says poor local transport can mean there is in effect "zero competition" between schools, with parents unable to choose an alternative.
Timo Hannnay, founder of SchoolDash, says the research supports an "intuitive" sense about places that are "cut off and disadvantaged".
But he says there are more unexpected findings.
It affects secondary but not particularly primary schools, which he thinks reflects the difficulty in recruiting specialist teachers.
He was also surprised to see how soon the isolation factor is felt, including in the outskirts of big cities. "You don't have to be very far away for it to make a difference".
Click on the map to explore geographics
