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The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence

  1. Robert Plomina,2
  1. aMedical Research Council Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom;
  2. bDivision of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0DS, United Kingdom;
  3. cPsychology in Education Research Centre, Department of Education, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom;
  4. dDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309;
  5. eDepartment of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;
  6. fLaboratory for Cognitive Investigations and Behavioural Genetics, Tomsk State University, Tomsk 634050, Russia; and
  7. gDepartment of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131

  1. Edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, and approved September 10, 2014 (received for review May 13, 2014)

Significance

Differences among children in educational achievement are highly heritable from the early school years until the end of compulsory education at age 16, when UK students are assessed nationwide with standard achievement tests [General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)]. Genetic research has shown that intelligence makes a major contribution to the heritability of educational achievement. However, we show that other broad domains of behavior such as personality and psychopathology also account for genetic influence on GCSE scores beyond that predicted by intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE scores. These results underline the importance of genetics in educational achievement and its correlates. The results also support the trend in education toward personalized learning.

Abstract

Because educational achievement at the end of compulsory schooling represents a major tipping point in life, understanding its causes and correlates is important for individual children, their families, and society. Here we identify the general ingredients of educational achievement using a multivariate design that goes beyond intelligence to consider a wide range of predictors, such as self-efficacy, personality, and behavior problems, to assess their independent and joint contributions to educational achievement. We use a genetically sensitive design to address the question of why educational achievement is so highly heritable. We focus on the results of a United Kingdom-wide examination, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), which is administered at the end of compulsory education at age 16. GCSE scores were obtained for 13,306 twins at age 16, whom we also assessed contemporaneously on 83 scales that were condensed to nine broad psychological domains, including intelligence, self-efficacy, personality, well-being, and behavior problems. The mean of GCSE core subjects (English, mathematics, science) is more heritable (62%) than the nine predictor domains (35–58%). Each of the domains correlates significantly with GCSE results, and these correlations are largely mediated genetically. The main finding is that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of GCSE than any other single domain, the other domains collectively account for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE. We conclude that the high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.

Footnotes

  • ↵1E.K. and K.R. contributed equally to this work.

  • ↵2To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: robert.plomin{at}kcl.ac.uk.

  • Author contributions: E.K., K.R., P.S.D., and R.P. designed research; E.K., K.R., and A.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; E.K., K.R., N.G.S., M.T., and A.M. analyzed data; and E.K., K.R., N.G.S., M.T., A.M., J.-B.P., K.A., N.H., Y.K., P.S.D., and R.P. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1408777111/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

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