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Saturday 23 July 2016

Why Kids’ Academics Achievements May Be Due To Their Parent’s DNA

Children whose parents are very involved in their academics activities have higher chances of excelling at school. Right from an early age, they have greater mastery of early basic school skills than their peers whose parents have low involvement in their school’s activities. Having said this, your kids’ success in academics may now be predicted by age 16 as a recent study published in a journal – Molecular Psychiatry shows that parents’ DNA is responsible for their kids’ academic performance in school and this according to Science daily is the strongest prediction from DNA of a behavioral measure to date.

Based on UK-wide assessments of the national curriculum, a genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) was calculated for each individual in a sample of 5825 students from separate families in the UK with educational achievement scores in Maths and English of kids in elementary and secondary schools at ages 7, 12 and 16.

A participant’s polygenic score is a measure of how certain genes such as academic achievements influence traits. It was determined from the research that DNA is responsible for 10 percent of the differences in academic achievement.

It was also found that there was no evidence of an interaction between the GPS and family socioeconomic status on educational achievement. Their findings verify that individual differences in educational achievement are partly due to DNA differences between children and are not solely created by environmental forces.

The researchers believe that very soon, polygenic scores will be used to identify individuals who are at greater risk of having learning difficulties as they found out that through polygenic scoring, almost 10 percent of the differences between children's achievement is due to DNA alone.

So according to this research, your kids’ success in academics may be predetermined. Truly check yourself out, if you are a genius, your kids have you to thank for their brains. If on the other hand, you weren’t the kind doing very well in some areas in school, the point of this post is to check your child and let them get the help they need earlier.