DNA Predicts Academic Achievement

REPORT: Scientists from King’s College London have used a new genetic scoring technique to predict academic achievement from DNA alone. This is the strongest prediction from DNA of a behavioural measure to date.
The research shows that a genetic score comprising 20,000 DNA variants explains almost 10 per cent of the differences between children’s educational attainment at the age of 16. DNA alone therefore provides a much better prediction of academic achievement than gender or even ‘grit’, a personality trait thought to measure perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
Published today in Molecular Psychiatry, these findings mark a ‘tipping point’ in predicting academic achievement and could help with identifying children who are at greater risk of having learning difficulties.
Previous research on twin studies has found that 60 per cent of differences between individuals’ educational achievement are due to differences in DNA. Whilst this may seem far from the 10 per cent predicted in this study, the authors note that twin studies examine the sum total of all genetic effects, including common and rare variants, interactions between genes, and gene-environment interactions. Twin studies can therefore tell us the overall genetic influence on a trait in a population.