Genetics, Not Environment, Explain Differences in Students' Educational Achievement

It turns out that differences in educational achievement depends more on genetics than the environment. Scientists have discovered that while teachers, schools and families do play a role in how well a student does, their genes are more important at the end of the day.

In order to tackle the issue of nature versus nurture, the researchers compared the GCSE exam scores of over 11,000 identical and non-identical 16-year-old twins from the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). This allowed them to compare how likely it was that genetics played a role when it came to how well the sets of twins did.

So what did they find? It turns out that for compulsory core subjects, such as English, Mathematics and Science, genetic differences between students explained about 58 percent of the differences between scores. In contrast, 29 percent of the differences in core subject grades are due to shared environment, such as teachers, schools and families. The remaining differences were explained by non-shared environment.

"Children differ in how easily they learn at school," said Nicholas Shakeshaft, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our research shows that differences in students' educational achievement owe more to nature than nurture. Since we are studying whole populations, this does not mean that genetics explains 60 percent of an individual's performance, but rather that genetics explains 60 percent of the differences between individuals, in the population as it exists at the moment. This means that heritability is not fixed--if environmental influences change, then the influence of genetics on educational achievement may change too."

The findings reveal that it's important to recognize the major role that genetics play in children's educational achievement. This means that educational systems that are sensitive to children's individual attentions and needs might actually improve educational achievement as a whole.

"The findings from this substantial cohort add to a convincing body of evidence that genes influence characteristics that are ultimately reflected in educational performance," said Michael O'Donovan from the Neurosciences and Mental Health board at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in a news release. "But it is equally important to stress that the researchers found that environments for students are also important and that the study does not imply that improvements in education will not have important benefits."

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.