Using Upper Franconia as an example, the BiLO project addressed the question of the interplay between education and space. The leading research question of the project was the connection between individual educational decisions and perceived educational offers, taking into account the social space.

In this context, education is conceived as a lifelong concept, which is why the project starts with early childhood education in the first years of life and continues to consider school and vocational education as well as the study phase and further education in adulthood. In addition, the area of cultural education is focused on throughout the entire life course.

The findings from the BiLO project also serve supraregional educational research by being incorporated into the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), the largest German longitudinal study on educational trajectories, which is based at LIfBi. The expertise gained in the project on address data management, georeferencing and distance calculation as well as on the implementation of online surveys, will be incorporated into future planning and work for the NEPS. The anonymized data have been available for educational researchers in a Scientific Use File (SUF) for scientific use since March 2020. The dataset is particularly valuable because, in addition to the survey data, it contains 600 million distance measures that map distances between respondents' places of residence and educational locations in compliance with data protection laws.

The "Atlas BildungsLandschaft Oberfranken" represents a special transfer service. It provides municipal education offices, as well as the interested public, with comparable and reliable information on the education situation in Upper Franconia in the sense of comprehensive municipal education monitoring at the district level. It is available as a print version with detailed information on individual districts as well as digitally in the form of a local education database for Upper Franconia. This was created in cooperation with LIfBi software development and is available to interested parties free of charge (www.bilo-atlas.de).

In order to answer the research questions, data from local education providers in Upper Franconia were collected as part of the project and linked with data from a representative survey of the Upper Franconian population, which were also collected specifically (see Methodological Implementation and at www.bilo-data.de).

The data and findings on the educational situation in Upper Franconia from both the supply and the user perspective were visualized cartographically and made available in the "Atlas BildungsLandschaft Oberfranken" as a publicly accessible source of information. A list of these and other project publications can be found here.

• Survey of the Upper Franconian population: In order to be able to record the perception of the educational offer as well as the individual participation in and demand for education in Upper Franconia, a representative survey of the population was carried out (planned sample size: 8,000 people). The design included a repeat survey of those respondents who were about to make an educational decision in the first survey in order to record the decision made.
• Online survey of education providers: The aim of the online survey (approx. 1,500 education providers) was to record basic structural features of Upper Franconia's educational offerings in order to reflect a differentiated picture. Furthermore, it was planned to identify educational areas independent of administrative boundaries within Upper Franconia and in combination with individual data on utilization. Therefore, additional information on the catchment area of the educational offers was collected.
• Database on education in Upper Franconia: The project database contains information on the local location of education providers, information on structural features of Upper Franconia as well as all survey data collected, and compiles these in compliance with data protection regulations. Furthermore, it forms the basis for the cartographic processing of the data within the framework of the "Atlas BildungsLandschaft Oberfranken".

The results of the study were published in the anthology by Michaela Sixt, Michael Bayer and Doreen Müller (eds.) „Bildungsentscheidungen und lokales Angebot. Die Bedeutung der Infrastruktur für Bildungsentscheidungen im Lebensverlauf“ published by Waxmann in 2018.

A number of research findings will be listed here as examples:

• Every kilometer counts! The further away the high school is from the place of residence, the less likely it is to be attended. (Sixt 2018: pp. 86-114)
• Long distances to school put a strain on school children. (Stöhr & Sixt 2018: 115-137)
• For students with parents without a high school diploma: If there is at least one secondary school in the immediate vicinity of the place of residence, this is often chosen instead of dual education. (Fischer, Zeichner & Hofmann 2018: pp. 138-166)
• Especially for students with a low social background, places of study closer to home are more likely to be considered. (Baur & Fischer 2018: pp. 67-192)
• Educationally disadvantaged individuals benefit from nearby and diverse continuing education opportunities. (Baur & Stöhr 2018: pp. 193-216)
• When using daycare facilities, children of parents with lower educational status travel further distances. (Müller 2018: pp. 57-85)
• If there is a theater in the locality, this can be an incentive to go to the theater regularly, especially for those who have rarely participated in high-cultural offerings in the past. (Sixt & Thürer 2018: pp. 217-245)

• Project lead: Dr. Michaela Sixt
• Applicant:
  • Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach
  • Dr. Michael Bayer
  • Dr. Michaela Sixt
• Project duration: 01/2014 – 05/2021
• Funding: Oberfrankenstiftung
• Project homepage: Atlas BildungsLandschaft Oberfranken
• Contact: bilo@lifbi.de
• Link to this page: www.lifbi.de/BILO