How well a child does at school has little to do with their teachers, peers or their home environment, new research suggests.
Instead, it's all about their genes.
Scientists at the University of Austin in Texas looked at test scores belonging to more than 6000 pairs of Identical and non-identical twins, ranging from primary school through to the end of high school.
"Using twins allows us to estimate the proportion of differences that can be explained by genetic factors," study co-authors Kaili Rimfeld and Margherita Malanchini said.
"If identical twins are more alike on a particular trait than non-identical twins, such as school achievement, we can infer that it is influenced by their genes."
They found students' marks were remarkably consistent throughout their education, and their shared DNA was responsible for about 70 percent of that stability.
Only 25 percent could be attributed to their shared home environment, with the remaining 5 percent coming from everything else - the different teachers and friends they had, for example.
"Around two-thirds of individual differences in school achievement are explained by differences in children's DNA," said Dr Malanchini.
But that leaves about 30 percent which can be affected by outside forces, such as poor health or unstable home lives.
When one twin did better or worse than the other, the researchers "was largely explained by those environmental factors that are not shared by twins".
They hope one day DNA tests one day will be able to suggest when a youngster could benefit from an early intervention in their education "as the problems are likely to remain throughout the school years".
The research was published on Thursday (NZ time) in journal NPJ Science of Learning.
Newshub.
