How much is academic achievement shaped by genes?

Researchers have found that a child’s genes significantly influence their long-term performance in school – beyond even intelligence.

Children differ widely in how well they do at school.
To study this,specialists used a sample of more than 6,000 pairs of twins and analysed their test scores from primary school to the end of compulsory education. The new research found that the twins’ educational achievement was remarkably stable: children who do well in primary school also tend to perform well in exams, which are taken at the end of compulsory education.

When there was a change in educational achievement – where grades increased or dropped between primary and secondary school – they found this was largely explained by those environmental factors that are not shared by twins.

Findings, which suggest that genes influence how well a child will do across the length of their time at school, should provide additional motivation to identify children in need of interventions as early as possible, as problems are likely to remain throughout the school years.

In the future it might provide a tool to identify children with educational problems very early in life. They could then be provided with individualised learning programmes. For example, we could use some tests at birth to identify children at genetic risk for developing reading problems and give them early intervention.