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Comparative Study
. 2015 Jul 23:5:11713.
doi: 10.1038/srep11713.

Pleiotropy across academic subjects at the end of compulsory education

Kaili Rimfeld  1 , Yulia Kovas  2 , Philip S Dale  3 , Robert Plomin  1
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Pleiotropy across academic subjects at the end of compulsory education

Kaili Rimfeld et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Research has shown that genes play an important role in educational achievement. A key question is the extent to which the same genes affect different academic subjects before and after controlling for general intelligence. The present study investigated genetic and environmental influences on, and links between, the various subjects of the age-16 UK-wide standardized GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examination results for 12,632 twins. Using the twin method that compares identical and non-identical twins, we found that all GCSE subjects were substantially heritable, and that various academic subjects correlated substantially both phenotypically and genetically, even after controlling for intelligence. Further evidence for pleiotropy in academic achievement was found using a method based directly on DNA from unrelated individuals. We conclude that performance differences for all subjects are highly heritable at the end of compulsory education and that many of the same genes affect different subjects independent of intelligence.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Univariate model-fitting results.
A = additive genetic, C = shared environmental, E = non-shared environmental components of variance for GCSE exam grades and intelligence.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Univariate model-fitting results with GCSE exam grades corrected for intelligence.
A = additive genetic, C = shared environmental, E = non-shared environmental components of variance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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