The educational indicators are an important basis for spatial researches focusing on regional development. Border areas provide special conditions for educational attainment, but the levels of aggregated results are worse in general. Different distance categories and given sections of Hungarian border areas are separated in order to detect the altering development paths of the complex educational attainment index (CEAI). This complex indicator combines the number of people with high school graduation and with diploma in the ratio of the 20 years or older population (with a weighting procedure included).Border areas are generally characterized by worse educational attainment values than the national average, but during the last more than six decades, significant convergence of data could be observed, in which the dominance of large towns is decisive. For this reason, suburbanization significantly impacts the spatial pattern of educational attainment in the border zones. Most parts of the settlements are below the national average, however general conditions are better in the case of the Austrian border section. However, the previously assumed continuous development of this border section has not been confirmed by our analysis.