ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 115 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
115 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 337 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multitrait genome association analysis identifies new susceptibility genes for human anthropometric variation in the GCAT cohort.Journal of medical genetics · 2018Pooled it
- Trial
- Heritability of Functional Literacy: Evidence from a Classical Twin Design.Behavior genetics · 2026Article
- Towards disentangling the polygenic contribution of dyslexia to school performance.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Non-cognitive skills mediate education-related polygenic score associations with academic achievement across development.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The genetic lottery goes to school: Better schools compensate for the effects of students' genetic differences.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Associations between academic achievement and internalizing disorders in Sweden 2006-2018: Moderation by sex, socio-economic status, and country of birth.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- Deciphering the influence of socioeconomic status on brain structure: insights from Mendelian randomization.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Educational attainment and mental health outcomes: A within-sibship Mendelian randomization study.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- The moderation of genetic risk for ten major psychiatric and substance use disorders by the genetic aptitude for educational attainment.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- From genetic disposition to academic achievement: The mediating role of non-cognitive skills across development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Paternal intelligence affects school grades in children with and without ADHD - a register-based study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Mathematics interest, self-efficacy, and anxiety predict STEM career choice in emerging adulthood.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Cognitive, affective and sociological predictors of school performance in mathematics.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Dissecting the polygenic contribution of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder on school performance by their relationship with educational attainment.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Controlling for polygenic genetic confounding in epidemiologic association studies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Genetic associations between non-cognitive skills and academic achievement over development.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- An exploration into the causal relationships between educational attainment, intelligence, and wellbeing: an observational and two-sample Mendelian randomisation study.Npj mental health research · 2024Article
- Gene-environment interaction analysis of school quality and educational inequality.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Controlling for polygenic genetic confounding in epidemiologic association studies.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
55 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 7 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
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.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.