Genes affect kids’ exam scores more than teaching

London – A new UK King’s College study has suggested that teachers, schools or the environment at home do not have as much influence on pupil’s GCSE results like genetics do.

For research purposes, experts compared the GCSE scores of over 11,000 identical and non-identical twins, who shared similar environment to some extent, the Guardian reported.

The findings showed that in English, maths and science, genes were responsible for on average 58 percent of the differences in children’s scores, whereas grades in physics, biology and chemistry were more heritable than those in humanities subjects at 58 percent and 42 percent respectively.

However, school life and family environment also accounted for 36 percent of the differences seen in students’ exam scores across all subjects.

Lead author Robert Plomin, an expert in behavioural genetics, said that people immediately think of schools if children differ in their GCSE scores, but if schools accounted for all the variance, then children in one classroom would all be the same.

The study is published in the journal Plos One.