Mobility and educational performance among high school students in Natal (RN, Brazil)

Abstract Little explored in literature, the daily home-school traveling reflects a spatial incoherence between the distribution of the school age population and basic education schools (secondary level) in Natal, Brazil. In this paper, we explore the profile of the commuters (students) from an intra-municipal political and administrative perspective. Thus, we were able to capture the daily flows of students among Natal neighborhoods. For this, we use the concept of living space as theoretical foundation and the school census database in 2012. Thus, the correlation between the place of residence and student studies showed a relationship between the traveling to school and school performance, measured by age-grade distortion in a logistic regression model. We identified that the chance for a student to have a good academic performance is not associated to the proximity of his home to school. In this sense, the dynamics of the population in terms of school distribution and students may represent important aspects of urban management and the provision of educational services, particularly in a context where demographic trends point to a significant reduction in school-age population in the next years.

摘要：现有学术文献对此鲜有探讨的每日家校通勤现象，反映出巴西纳塔尔市学龄人口分布与中等基础教育学校布局之间存在空间失衡问题。本研究从市域政治与行政视角出发，探究通勤学生的群体特征，借此刻画纳塔尔市各街区间的学生每日通勤流动情况。为此，本研究以生活空间概念为理论基础，采用2012年学校普查数据库展开分析。通过分析学生居住地与就学地的相关性，本研究揭示了家校通勤与学业表现之间的关联——学业表现以年龄年级偏差（age-grade distortion）为衡量指标，并通过逻辑回归模型进行验证。本研究发现，学生获得良好学业表现的概率，与其家与学校的空间距离并无关联。就此而言，针对学校布局与学生群体的人口动态分析，可为城市管理与教育服务供给提供重要参考维度，尤其在未来数年学龄人口将出现显著缩减的人口趋势背景下。