The impact of transportation connectivity on academic achievement of secondary school pupils : a case study of the Donji Miholjac Secondary School , Croatia

U radu se problematizira utjecaj prometne povezanosti kao jednoga od prediktora školskoga uspjeha na primjeru učenika putnika Srednje škole Donji Miholjac. Istraživanje je provedeno u travnju 2016. godine metodom anketiranja, dnevnika putovanja i intervjua učenika. Rezultati ankete uspoređeni su s podacima o školskom uspjehu učenika 2015./2016. Istraživanje je pokazalo da postoje razlike između uspjeha stacionarnih učenika i učenika putnika, pri čemu se ne marginalizira utjecaj i ostalih čimbenika. Glavni problemi koji se vezuju uz promet i školski uspjeh su neusklađenost voznoga reda i rasporeda sati, čime učenici putnici imaju velik utrošak vremena u odnosu na stacionirane, te neplaniranje prometnih pravaca javnoga prijevoza prema potrebama učenika putnika, što produljuje putovanje. Iako egzaktni podaci pokazuju razlike u uspjehu, učenici putnici ne smatraju da svakodnevna cirkulacija ima značajniji odraz na njihov školski uspjeh.


Introduction
In the contemporary, globalised world, academic accomplishment is considered an important indicator of future success.Academic success (or lack thereof ) has an important influence on a pupil's adolescent years, and often becomes the main indicator of personal adaptation and a precondition for success and happiness ( Jamil and Khalid, 2016).
Here we define academic accomplishment as the successful achievement of set objectives, expressed in the form of grades or descriptive success.
This study examined the influence of transportation connectivity as a predictor of academic success among secondary school pupils.The survey was conducted using the example of pupils at the Donji Miholjac Secondary School.Donji Miholjac is a town in Osijek-Baranja County in the traditional region of Slavonia, Eastern Croatia.The area was chosen because of its border location, and the significant economic and social problems of Eastern Croatia, which have resulted in vast emigration from the region.Under these conditions, Donji Miholjac is trying to attract young families by financing schoolbooks and transportation to school.
The introductory part of the paper defines the concept of predictors and the concept of transport connectivity as one of the predictors of academic success.This is followed by an overview of the relevant literature with emphasis on geographic indicators of success.The second part outlines the methodology employed in the study, and the methods used to process the results.The third part of the paper presents the study results, followed by the discussion and conclusions.
In the literature, various predictors have been noted to have an influence on academic success.Dević (2015) differentiated three groups of predictors of academic success.The first were the individual characteristics of pupils, including intelligence, personality, motivation, and confidence.The second were characteristics of the pupil's environment, including the family's economic status, employment and education of parents, and family structure (siblings).The third consisted of characteristics of the school, teachers and the schooling određenim razlikama u podjelama svim je autorima zajedničko slaganje oko činjenice da je teško jasno odrediti jačinu utjecaja pojedinih prediktora na školski uspjeh.Autori se također slažu da je proučavanje prediktora na školski uspjeh važno s više aspekata.Proučavanje prediktora omogućuje nam da, često uz manje preinake sustava ili uklanjanje određenih stanja, pridonesemo znatnom povećanju učeničkih postignuća.
There are few studies dealing with a theoretical approach to the predictors.Some of the notable studies are those by Babarović et al. (2009;2010), who gave an overview of the cognitive factors, environmental factors, and particularly the socioeconomic status of the family, properties of the teaching process, and school properties as the most commonly used predictors.The review paper by Jamil and Khalida (2016) gave a significant contribution to the overview of the work to date on the influence of individual personal predictors.A broad spectrum of predictors and their influence on academic accomplishment amongst Turkish secondary school pupils was examined by Yesilyurt and Say (2016), Saw (2016), and Raychaudhuri et al. (2010).
There are fewer papers that address the influence of geographic predictors.Kuterovac Jagodić et al. (2013) emphasised the correlation between school location and academic success.However, the authors classified school location as schools in urban vs. rural areas, without consideration for the issues of transportation connection and accessibility of certain locations.Similar topics were addressed by Burušić et al. (2012) and Owoeye and Yara (2011).School location (in the sense of urban vs. rural) was also analysed by Barbarović et al. (2010).And while there are few papers dealing with geographic predictors, there are even fewer studies focusing on the influence of transport connectivity and accessibility of schools on academic success.Most papers examine accessibility and the use of individual types of telecommunications, such as Internet, in relation to academic success.For example, Maras and Rodek (2012) analysed the influence of Internet access and the possession of a personal computer in relation to academic success.The number of geographic papers is even fewer, and one of the rare authors in this field is S. Gašparović (2014a;2014b).In his doctoral dissertation, Gašparović studied the impacts of transport marginalisation on the daily life of the secondary school population in the City of Zagreb, where transport marginalisation was defined as "the inability to travel when and where one wants without difficulty" or as a "situation in which people experience, for different reasons, a deficiency of transport opportunities, which restricts their mobility and access to goods, services, and interac-
Prometnu mobilnost, fizičku ili virtualnu, možemo definirati kao mogućnost i potrebu za kretanjem ljudi, odnosno kao fizičko kretanje Gašparović (2014a;2014b).Na mobilnost pojedinca utječu dvije osnovne skupine čimbenika: socijalne i fizičke.U našem istraživanju naglasak prvenstveno stavljamo na fizičke čimbenike koji između osta-tions" and examined the influence of such transport marginalisation on academic activities (Gašparović, 2014a, 31.).In so doing, he also examined the influence of transport connectivity and traffic problems on academic success.His results indicated a significant connection between the distance from home to school, and the length of travel to school with academic success (Pearson's correlation coefficient r = -0.139)(Gašparović, 2014a;2014b).He concluded that pupils who take public transport to school had somewhat lower academic success than pupils who did not.Travel time to school had a negative value in the regression analysis, indicating that pupils who spent a longer time travelling to school had lower academic success.The same topic was addressed by Gašparović and Jakovčić (2014).In that study, transport marginalisation was defined as a situation in which people, for different reasons, experienced a deficiency of transport opportunities, which restricted their mobility and access to goods, services, and interactions.Reasons for this deficiency can vary, and for this research we used the factor of age.According to Croatian law, people under age of 18 are not permitted to drive a car, which can have a large effect on transportation connectivity for the secondary school population.
To better understand the issues of transport connectivity and accessibility as a predictor of academic success, it is necessary to define the concepts of transport mobility, transport connectivity, and transport accessibility.Transport is an activity that represents the movement of people, goods and energy, and the transport of information from one place to another (Black, 2003).The purpose of transport is the movement from one place to another to satisfy fundamental life needs, and in this study, it pertains to the function of education.

Metode
Kako bi se ispitale istraživačke hipoteze, kao odgovarajuće metode odabrane su anketa (klasično anketno ispitivanje te dnevnik putovanja s pripadajućim intervjuom) i eksplicitne usporedbe prosjeka učenika s razvidnom diferencijacijom na stacionirane učenike i učenike putnike te s cjelokupnom populacijom učenika u pojedinoj generaciji i vrsti programa (trogodišnja, odnosno četverogodišnja strukovna škola te gimnazija).and meeting fundamental life needs and functions through the use of the transport system (Gašparović, 2014a;Halden et al., 2005).Accessibility can also be defined as the degree of ability by which we can access activities and functions within the framework of acceptable costs, within a reasonable time, and with tolerable ease (Gašparović, 2014a).Accessibility is the connection among individual transport hubs (function) within the transport network.Transport connectivity indicates the degree of connection between individual hubs (functions, or, in the present study, the function of education) within a certain transport network.Accessibility of means of transport is of the utmost importance to achieving life functions.In general, the greater the accessibility and higher the degree of connectivity, i.e. the access to various functions as the function of education, is desirable.If this mobility or accessibility is hindered, this will result in a limitation of the opportunities to fulfil one's needs, and therefore will lead to the appearance of transport marginalisation (Gašparović, 2016;Hoyle and Knowles, 1998).
The main objective of the research was to determine how transport connectivity, as a geographic predictor, affected academic success.The starting hypothesis is that transport connectivity is an objective geographic predictor of academic success.The second hypothesis set is that the degree of transport connectivity influences academic success -with the assumption that there is a positive correlation of connectivity for travelling pupils, i.e. that poor transport connectivity will have a negative impact on academic success.

Methods
In order to test the set hypotheses, surveys and travel diaries were used as a primary source, accompanied by comparisons of grade averages of pupils, with differentiation into groups of resident and travelling pupils, and with the overall population of pupils in that generation and the type of school programme.
Having in mind contradictory opinions on how the questionnaires should be formulated in
Druga metoda korištena u ovom istraživanju jest dnevnik putovanja.Dvoje učenika istoga razreda te istoga rasporeda, ali različita mjesta stanovanja (učenica putnica te stacionirani učenik) tijekom dva tjedna (u jednom tjednu jutarnja smjena, u drugom popodnevna) ispunjavali su svoj obrazac putovanja prateći točno vrijeme početka i kraja kretanja od doma do autobusne stanice i natrag, početka i kraja vožnje do škole i natrag, dolaska od autobusne stanice do škole i natrag (učenica putnica), odnosno stacionirani učenik vrijeme početka kretanja od doma do škole i natrag.Iako na malom uzorku, dnevnik putovanja poslužio je kao egzemplarni model razlikovanja utrošenoga vremena za dolazak iz mjesta stanovanja u mjesto školovanja i obratno.Isti učenici intervjuirani su nakon vođenja dnevnika putovanja nizom pitanja kojim su davali kompleksnije odgovore nego na pitanja postavljena u upitniku.Dnevnici putovanja jedan su od načina proučavanja obrazaca researching transport issues (Moser andKalton, 1979, as cited in Richardson et al., 1995), a questionnaire with 20 questions was drawn up.The first group of questions collected personal data, while the second group of questions was concerned the information, opinions, and perceptions of transport and transport connectivity.For this paper, representative questions were selected.The survey included the complete population of travelling pupils at the Donji Miholjac Secondary School.Surveying was conducted in April 2016 at the school, with the prior consent of parents for minor pupils and the consent of pupils of legal age, and with the cooperation of the school's professional services.A total of 245 travelling pupils were questioned, 92.1% of all travelling pupils attending the Donji Miholjac Secondary School, and 63.6% of the total number of pupils at this school.After reviewing the questionnaires, it was confirmed that 224 pupils (91.4%) had completed the questionnaires completely and validly, in accordance with the instructions, and their responses were considered for further use in this study.The survey results were analysed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 23 program.
The second method used in this study was the daily travel diary.Two pupils from the same class and with the same schedule, but from different places of residence (one female travelling pupil and one male resident pupil), were asked to record their travels over two weeks (one week in the morning shift and one week in the afternoon shift).The travelling pupil was asked to write down the precise start and end times of the following: travel from home to the bus station and back; the start and end of the ride to school and back; and arrival from the bus station to the school and back.On the other hand, the resident pupil was only required to record how long it took to get to school and back home.Though this was a small sample, the travel diary served as an exemplary model for differentiating time spent travelling from home to school and back.The same pupils were interviewed following the keeping of the travel diary, and asked a set of questions that gave more complex answers than the questions posed in the questionnaire.Travel diaries are an established means used to study patterns of traveller behaviour, and for planning transport (Axhausen et al., 2002).87−108 (2017.)putničkoga ponašanja, ali i planiranja prometa (Axhausen i dr., 2002), pri čemu je planiranje prometa, odnosno usklađenost voznoga reda sa školskim rasporedom učenika jedno od temeljnih pitanja kada se govori o učenicima putnicima.
Nakon što je utvrđeno gravitacijsko područje funkcije srednjega školstva Donjeg Miholjca samim mjestom prebivanja učenika putnika, potrebno je odrediti sredstvo dolaska učenika putnika u mjesto školovanja.Od ukupno 224 ispitana učenika putnika svega 2 učenice, obje starije od 18 godina, u školu The third method used in the research was a self-evaluation.Pupils were asked to estimate the impact of the time spent daily going to and from school in relation to their respective levels of school achievement.Their answers were then compared with their exact level of school achievement, obtained from school administration.School achievements were analysed in regard to the type of school, school year, and place of residence (travelling pupils vs. resident pupils).A distinction was made between the three-year vocational programme, four-year vocational programme, and gymnasium programme, as there were differences in the profiles of pupils enrolled in these different programmes, which were most evident in academic success level upon enrolment in secondary school.Academic success in primary school is one of the main factors for selecting pupils for enrolment in a given secondary school programme, which leaves repercussions on "the possibilities for further schooling and selection of a profession" (Macuka and Burić, 2015, p. 417).The average of a particular year and education profile, with respect to the duration of school, is marked with the 100 index, while the average of travelling pupils and resident pupils is expressed as the ratio of the average of travelling pupils or resident pupils to the average of the specific year and educational profile.General academic success was provided by the school administration, without any reference to pupils' personal information.

Results
Of the surveyed travelling pupils, 53.6% were male and 46.4% were female.The age structure of the respondents is visible in Tab. 1.The gravity reach of the function of secondary school education was covered by a circle of roughly 40 kilometres.The travelling pupils from city neighbourhoods (5.6%) should in this case be differentiated from those from rural settlements and the immediate area (94.4%).
Once the gravitational area of the Donji Miholjec Secondary School was determined as a function of the place of residence of the travelling pupils, it was necessary to determine the means by which travelling pupils travelled to school.The distribution of dolaze automobilom, dok svi ostali u školu dolaze autobusom.
In the further analysis, only the pupils who went to school via bus were included, since they were directly dependent on the (bus) schedule in order to get to school and return home.These pupils were asked a series of questions relating to transport connectivity, their perceptions regarding transport connectivity, and their perceptions of the influence of transport connectivity and their daily travels in relation to their academic success.
Considering that the pupils lived in different settlements, the mean travel time and the total travel time from home to school and back was assessed.Results are presented in table 2.
The next two questions involved the alignment of the bus schedule with the school's timetable, and the relevant indicator was the time the pupils had at their disposal between the arrival of the bus to Donji Miholjac and the beginning of school, and the time available between the end of school and the departure of the bus from the stop or station for the ride home.In this specific case, pupils were asked to use a day with seven classes as the reference day.The results are shown in
The pupils were then asked to assess four statements on a scale of 1 to 5 (in which 1 = strongly disagree with the statement, and 5 = strongly agree with the statement).Those pupils without an opinion were given the opportunity to write the number 0 next to the question, though there were no such cases.Questions and answers are presented in Figure 2.
Pupils were asked to assess the quality of public transport service on a scale of 1 to 5. The average score obtained was 3.61.
In addition to the anonymous survey responses, for the purposes of this study, two travel diaries were kept.The first diary was kept by a female travelling pupil from the settlement of Viljevo, 9.5 km away from Donji Miholjac.The pupil lives 200 metres from the bus station and takes the bus to school and home every day.Since the pupil lives less than 400 metres from the public bus stop, as the accepted distance, she cannot be considered to be a transport-marginalised person.She kept a daily travel diary with the exact times of the start and finish of all trips to and from school (in the morning shift from April 4 th to 8 th , 2016, and in the afternoon shift from April 11 th to 15 th , 2016).The same travel diary was kept by a male resident pupil, who lives 700 metres (direct distance) from the school.The pupils are in the same class with the same class timetable.Results are represented in tables 4 to 7.
In the interview that followed, the female travelling pupil stated: "… in comparison to going by car, it's two or three times longer, because we do not go directly to Miholjac, but collect people in the surrounding villages."She also stated that her main problem during the morning school weeks was that she felt she that was sleeping much less than the other pupils in her class, because by taking the long route, she needed to leave earlier; while
Kako bi se utvrdili objektivni pokazatelji školskoga uspjeha od škola su dobiveni podaci o školskom uspjehu učenika.Prosjeci učenika s obzirom na odabrane varijable prikazani su u Tab. 8. in the afternoon week, the wait after arriving in Donji Miholjac until the start of class was too long.She particularly stressed the issue of sleep deprivation, claiming that her testing results were always poorer in the morning weeks than in the afternoon weeks.
In order to establish objective indicators of academic success, the school provided the academic success of pupils.The pupil averages, given the selected variables, are shown in Table 8.

Means of transport, transport connectivity, and the alignment of the bus schedule with the school's timetable
Young people are among the most frequent users of public transport, and it is necessary to ensure an efficient public transport system that will ensure their safety and comfort, so that they do not have to rely on their parents for longer and shorter journeys (Stafford et al., 2003).Of those surveyed, 99.1% travelled to Donji Miholjac by bus (public transport).There were several factors that influenced the selection of the bus as the main means of transport: most of the pupils surveyed (74.1%) were under the age of 18 years-the legal driving age in Croatia.Furthermore, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport (as it was called at time of survey, now it is called Ministry of Education and Science), co-financed 75% of the monthly public transit pass for travelling pupils, while the remainder was covered by the Osijek-Baranja County or local government.
The average duration of bus ride to the school is 23 minutes, however, it should also be taken into account that 9.9% of travelling pupils travel less than 10 minutes to school, while 6.3% travel over 45 minutes.A weak association was found between the duration of travel and the subjective perception of the duration of travel (r = -0.24),indicating that some pupils travelling up to 30 minutes to school considered the trip too long.One reason can be seen in the statement of the female pupil who kept the travel diary, stating that in comparison to travelling by car, the bus trip took 2 to 3 times longer, as the route was not direct, but instead picked up and dropped off pupils from other surrounding settlements.The bus companies plan their routes in order to maximise bus capacity per trip and make sure that as many pupils in the area as possible have access to public transportation, making the travel time longer.Such planned routes directly act to combat transport marginalisation, which can potentially lead to social exclusion of pupils (Gašparović, 2016;2014b;Gašparović and Jakovčić, 2014).
The travel diaries kept by the two pupils explicitly showed a difference in the time spent travel-

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ling to and from school.The travelling pupil spent an average of 75 minutes a day in travel in the morning week of school, and 110 minutes a day in the afternoon shift, as opposed to the resident pupil who spent an average of 20 minutes in travel time, in both shifts.This leads to the conclusion that the resident pupil is always in a more beneficial position, leaving more time for other activities -studying, extracurricular activities, etc. (Kalajdžić et al., 2015).
Wait time is a common benchmark for the efficiency of a transport system.In this study, wait time was viewed through the prism of the alignment of the school's timetable with the bus schedule, i.e. as the waiting time between the arrival of the bus to the school and the start of classes, or between the end of school and the departure of the bus.More than 50% of those surveyed waited up to 10 minutes before class, while 14% of those surveyed waited more than 45 minutes.Due to such extremes, the bus schedule and arrival at school could only be assessed to be somewhat aligned to the school's timetable, highlighting the need for greater awareness on the part of bus companies for pupils' needs, since the time spent travelling (or total travel duration) is the sum of the time spent travelling and the time spent waiting.On the other hand, the time spent waiting between the end of class and the departure of the bus was much more favourable, with 82.4% of pupils waiting a maximum of 20 minutes for a ride home, 67.9% a maximum of 10 minutes, and 3.6% of pupils waiting more than 45 minutes for the bus to leave.Only a little over 50% of pupils expressed their strong or partial agreement with the statement that the bus schedule is aligned with the school timetable, indicating the need to introduce adjustments to the bus schedule.The public transport service was mostly assessed to be very good or excellent (56.9%), however, 43.1% of pupils assessed the service as insufficient, sufficient or good, showing there is substantial room for improvement.Besides time table, additional problems stated were old vehicles, poor quality of buses, behaviour of drivers and staff, and poor quality of service in general.

Academic success and pupil travel habits
With regard to academic success, this most often implies the pupils (numerical) grade, as numerical indicators of the pupil's knowledge.However, academic success is not simply a reflection of knowledge -it is also a reflection of various factors that leave direct and indirect consequences on a pupil's academic success (Macuka and Burić, 2015).Hattie (2009( , as cited in Dević, 2015) ) listed 138 variables or predictors found to be associated with academic success.The subject of this study was the influence of transport connectivity, or daily travel habits, as a predictor of pupils' academic success, which is an unjustly neglected topic in the study of academic success.
As part of the anonymous survey, pupils were first asked to assess the impact of their daily travels on their academic success.Among them, 40.6% expressed disagreement, and 15.6% agreement with the claim that their daily travel reflects on their academic success.The differences between pupils were dependent on the length of their daily travels.For example, 42.8% of pupils who travelled longer than 45 minutes believed that this impacted their academic success.For pupils travelling between 30 and 45 minutes, that share was 24.1%.On the other hand, 41.1% of pupils travelling less than 30 minutes believed that their travel time did not impact their grades, and 22.6% that it mostly did not impact their grades.However, when considering the objective indicator of grade averages obtained from the school, the results can be seen in a somewhat different light.Though travelling pupils achieved a higher grade average in two years of the three-year programmes (the 1 st and 2 nd years, respectively), the situation was the opposite for all other cases.The largest difference was found among the pupils from the gymnasium programme, in which 58.1% stated that their daily travel habits had an impact on their grades.They spend part of their day traveling, instead of using that time to study, which is particularly emphasised due to the frequently-stated issue of the difficulty of the gymnasium curriculum (Biondić-Ivanković et al., 2004).This was also confirmed in the interview with the travelling pupil who kept the travel diary, and who stressed problems with lack of sleep and fatigue due to the length of her travelling time.It also shows that the time spent in transport should be viewed from a broader perspective, as an indirect factor that affects all

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other aspects of the lives of travelling pupils.On the other hand, pupils in the three-year vocational schools (70.2%) stated that they strongly or partially disagreed that daily travel habits and living in a place far away from their place of schooling had an effect on their academic success.However, the data suggest otherwise.For pupils in the three-year vocational programmes, the difference between the average academic success of travelling pupils throughout the entire programme and the success of resident pupils was half the number found for gymnasium pupils.The most pupils in fouryear vocational programmes did not have an opinion (35.1%), and, generally, the differences in academic successes between travelling and resident pupils was the smallest (regarding this group).However, when examined at the level of individual years, two extremes were evident.The first was the case in the 2 nd year of the four-year programme, where travelling pupils achieved higher academic success (by 5.2%) than resident pupils, while the second case in the 4 th year of the same programme, where travelling pupils achieved lower success (by 12.0%) than resident pupils.From this, it can be concluded that the gymnasium pupils were most realistic in the self-assessment of their success and the external factor of transport that impacted success, while travelling pupils of three-year vocational schools underestimated the impact of their daily travel habits on academic success.In comparing the total results of the self-assessment and actual school grades, there were evident differences in the subjective perception of success and actual success, in support of previous findings (Freeberg, 1988;Bahrick et al., 1996;Caldwell et al., 2002) that stated that pupils more often overestimated their academic success, rather than underestimating it or giving a realistic assessment.It is necessary to see the correlation between the responses pertaining to the duration of travel and responses on how travel habits affect academic success (r = 0.38), where there is an association between increasing agreement with the statement that travel to school takes too long and increasing agreement that the daily travel habits have an effect on academic success.This once again confirms that transport is one of the most crucial predictors of academic success.However, we are aware that transportation is just one of many geographical predictors, and that to gain a full sense of the scope of the problem, other predictors should be taken into account, such as socioeconomic situation, parents' education level, etc. života učenika putnika.S druge strane, učenici trogodišnjih strukovnih škola, njih 70,2 %, izjavilo je da u potpunosti ili djelomično odbacuju tvrdnju kako svakodnevn cirkulacija i život u drugom mjestu od mjesta školovanja imaju utjecaja na njihov školski uspjeh.Međutim, konkretni podaci pokazuju suprotno.Ipak, kod učenika trogodišnjih strukovnih usmjerenja razlika između prosječnoga školskog uspjeha učenika putnika cjelokupnoga trogodišnjeg strukovnog usmjerenja i prosječnoga školskog uspjeha stacioniranih učenika istoga usmjerenja upola je manja od takve razlike kod gimnazijalaca.Najviše ispitanih koji pohađaju četverogodišnje strukovne škole nema definiran stav (35,1 %).Kad se ukupno gleda, razlike u školskom uspjehu su najmanje, međutim, kada se spusti na razinu godišta, uočavaju se dva ekstrema -prvi je slučaj u 2. razredu četverogodišnjih usmjerenja, gdje učenici putnici prosječno ostvaraju bolji školski uspjeh i to za 5,22 %, dok je drugi u 4. razredu četverogodišnjih usmjerenja, gdje učenici putnici ostvaruju lošiji školski uspjeh od stacioniranih učenika i to za 12,02 %.Na osnovi tih podataka možemo tvrditi da su gimnazijalci najrealniji pri samoprocjeni svojega uspjeha i vanjskoga čimbenika prometa koji na njega utječe, dok učenici putnici trogodišnjih strukovnih škola podcjenjuju utjecaj svakodnevnih cirkulacija na školski uspjeh.Uspoređujući ukupne rezultate samoprocjene i školskih uspjeha u obliku prosječnih ocjena, vidljive su razlike u subjektivnom doživljaju uspjeha i stvarnoga uspjeha, čime se potvrđuju dosadašnje spoznaje (Freeberg, 1988;Bahrick i dr. 1996;Caldwell i dr., 2002) koje govore da učenici češće precjenjuju svoj školski uspjeh nego što ga podcjenjuju ili ocjenjuju realno.Valja uočiti i korelacijsku vezu između odgovora vezanih za duljinu trajanja putovanja i odgovora vezanih za utjecaj cirkulacije i školskog uspjeha (r = 0,38), gdje se uočava zakonitost da se pojačavanjem slaganja s tvrdnjom kako putovanje do škole traje predugo pojačava i slaganje s tvrdnjom da svakodnevna cirkulacija ima utjecaja na školski uspjeh, čime se ponovno potvrđuje da je promet jedan od važnih prediktora u obrazovanju učenika.Pritom smo svjesni činjenice da je promet samo jedan od geografskih prediktora, dok bi za dobivanje pune slike trebalo uzeti u obzir i neke druge prediktore poput socio-ekonomskoga statusa obitelji učenika, stupnja obrazovanja roditelja i slično.

Conclusions
There is a wide range of available studies on predictors of academic success, however, the case of travelling pupils and how their daily travel habits affect their academic success has not yet been sufficiently addressed.Pupils are among the most common users of public transport services, travelling on a daily basis.This study was made upon the assumption that daily travel habits have a certain effect on their academic success, without neglecting other series of predictors.
On the basis of the data obtained by surveying travelling pupils and an analysis of their academic success, the research showed the following: travelling pupils, though they generally did not feel as though their daily travel habits had an effect on their academic success, on average achieved poorer academic results by the end of the school year, in comparison to resident pupils.This could be explained by the time spent every day in travel, which instead could be spent studying or resting, thereby confirming the hypothesis that transport connectivity is an objective predictor of academic success.However it is necessary to state that transportation is just one of many geographical predictors of academic success.Furthermore, the conducted analysis did not give us an answer regarding the level of impact that transportation has on academic success in comparison to other geographical factors.Additionally, legislation in Croatia regarding protection of personal data prevented us from further analysing the position of transportation in comparison to other predictors such as socioeconomic situation, level of income, etc.
Moreover, the study showed that according to the opinions of travelling pupils, the planned transport routes do not satisfy their needs, and that they should be redefined, in order to ensure that pupils are not subjected to transport marginalisation, which could lead to social exclusion.This can only be achieved through the mutual understanding of the needs of travelling pupils and the economic feasibility of those providing public transport services.In an equal opportunity society, transport connectivity is one of the segments of education

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that has proven to be of exceptional importance, and travelling pupils should be provided services aimed at eliminating or minimising the differences between these pupils and resident pupils.

Table 3 .
The average wait time in the morning is about 19 minutes, while the average in the afternoon is about 11 minutes.The total mean travel time to school Tab. 2. Prosječno ukupno vrijeme putovanja do škole