We can't use genetics to predict how well children will do at school

By Michael Le Page

Image Source/Alamy Stock Photo

Genetic testing cannot tell teachers anything useful about an individual pupil’s educational attainment, as some are claiming. That is the conclusion of a study that looked at how well so-called polygenic scores for education predict a person’s educational achievements, based on a long-term study of thousands of people in the UK.

“Some people with a very low genetic score are very high performers at age 16. Some are even in the top 3 per cent,” says Tim Morris at the University of Bristol, UK. “You …