You have heard the word genetic land on your child like a verdict. Maybe a relative said reading runs in the family, or a headline announced that scientists found the genes behind school success, and something in your chest tightened, because it sounded like a door quietly closing. From there it is a short step to wondering whether the late nights and the patient re-explaining add up to anything at all against the DNA your child was born with. Here is what that fear gets wrong: your child is not broken, and their future is not written into their genes. Genetic was never the same as fixed, and the science on that point is clearer than the headlines let on.
TL;DR
A DNA-based “education score” built from about three million people explains only around 16 percent of the differences in how far someone goes in school, leaving roughly 84 percent to everything outside the genes.
By the researchers’ own assessment, current genetic scores are not powerful or specific enough to predict any individual child’s future.
In computational models and in real population data, children with highly heritable traits improve from good support by the same amount as everyone else, so heritable was never the same as fixed.
Across every twin study ever pooled (about 14.5 million pairs, Polderman and colleagues, 2015), the average split between nature and nurture across human traits is roughly half and half.
A direct-to-consumer DNA result is not a verdict on your child or your child’s teacher; where your child stands today is the honest place to begin helping.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from Heritability is not Destiny with Professor Michael Thomas, Centre for Educational Neuroscience:
A DNA education score explains about 16 percent of how far a person goes in school, leaving 84 percent unexplained. Watch at 06:16
In his model, children with highly heritable traits improve from the same enrichment by the same amount as everyone else. Watch at 33:09
The honest answer when a DNA test result and a child’s actual progress disagree. Watch at 50:45
Common questions from parents
Should I get my child a DNA test that predicts how they will do in school?
There is little to gain right now. The largest study, built from about three million people, produces a score that explains only around 16 percent of differences in educational attainment, and the researchers are clear it is not accurate enough to predict an individual child. A result might be interesting, yet it tells you almost nothing actionable about the child in front of you.
If a learning difficulty is heritable, does that mean it is permanent?
No. Heritable describes how much of the variation between people is linked to genes; it says nothing about whether the trait is changeable. In both computational models and real population data, children with highly heritable traits improve from good support by the same amount as everyone else. Heritable and fixed are two different ideas.
My relative struggled with reading or math too. Is my child simply destined to repeat it?
Patterns running in a family blend shared genes with a shared environment, and researchers find that a large part of what looks inherited is the home a family builds around a child, sometimes called genetic nurture. The conditions you create are doing real, measurable work, and the trajectory is open.
A screening tool flagged my child. Is that a genetic verdict?
No. A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis, and it is not a genetic test. It points you toward where to begin today. If your child might need formal accommodations through an IEP or 504 plan, or you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too, because that is the route to those supports.
A DNA ‘Education Score’ Explains 16 Percent of School. The Other 84 Is Everything Else.
The most recent genome-wide study of educational attainment pooled DNA from about three million adults (Okbay and colleagues, 2022). From all of that data, researchers built a formula, called a polygenic score, that anyone could feed their own DNA into to predict how far they would go in school. The headline result: that score explains around 16 percent of the differences between people in years of education. Turn the number over and 84 percent of the difference sits outside the DNA, in everything a child actually lives through. It took three million people to surface even that 16 percent, because each genetic variant nudges the outcome by a sliver and there are thousands of them stacked together. A score built to describe a population of three million was never built to forecast the child at your kitchen table. The researchers say so themselves: these scores are not powerful or specific enough to predict an individual child’s future. A researcher in the same seminar series walked parents through what these genome studies do and do not show, and the short version is that a population statistic is not a prophecy about your kid.
Author Quote"
A score built to describe three million people was never built to forecast the child at your kitchen table.
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Laura LurnsLearning Success Expert
“Levels of heritability do not tell you about the plasticity or malleability of the underlying system.” - Professor Michael Thomas, Centre for Educational Neuroscience, Birkbeck, University of London
Heritable Was Never the Same as Unchangeable
Professor Michael Thomas, who directs the Centre for Educational Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London, titled his talk on this “Heritability is not Destiny,” and instead of asserting it he set out to test it. He built model children: artificial learning systems, each with its own simulated genome and its own environment, run through a development process. He created two populations, one where the differences came mostly from genes (high heritability) and one where they came mostly from environment (low heritability). Then he gave every model child the same enrichment and measured who improved. If genetic meant fixed, the high-heritability children should have barely moved. They improved by the same amount as the low-heritability children, and the gap held all the way into simulated adulthood. His conclusion is the line worth taping to the fridge: how heritable a trait is tells you nothing about how changeable it is. Real families show the same shape. In a large Norwegian population sample, researchers tested seven features of a child’s environment and found a meaningful tug-of-war between genes and environment in only one of them, and even that was small. Improve a child’s conditions and the child tends to benefit, whatever genes they carry. That fits what the wider science keeps showing about a developing brain: it is built to change with the right kind of practice, not to lock in at birth. None of this pretends genes do nothing. A 2015 study that pooled every twin study ever run, about 14.5 million twin pairs across thousands of traits (Polderman and colleagues), landed on a number worth holding onto: averaged across human traits, the split between nature and nurture is roughly half and half. Genes are real, and so is the half you shape. Part of what even looks purely genetic turns out to be the home a family builds, the conversations and books and patience that researchers call genetic nurture, the enriching world you are already making.
Key Takeaways:
1
Sixteen percent, not a verdict: A DNA education score explains about 16 percent of school outcomes, leaving 84 percent to everything a child lives through.
2
Heritable is not fixed: Model children with highly heritable traits improved from enrichment by the same amount as everyone else.
3
The home counts: Part of what looks genetic is the enriching world a family builds, what researchers call genetic nurture.
What to Do With a Number That Was Never About Your Child
Thomas opens with a scene every parent will recognize once they picture it. A parent sends a child’s DNA to a direct-to-consumer service, it comes back reading “top 10 percent for educational attainment,” the child is sitting in the bottom half of the class, and the parent marches to the school gate certain the teacher is failing. His recommended answer is disarmingly honest: these tests are not accurate yet, they are good fun, and the useful move is to work together on the child’s actual progress. Even a genuine top-10-percent score produces plenty of children in the bottom half, because the score was never a report card. The deeper danger is what the belief does on its own. Label a child as destined to struggle and the adults around them quietly lower the bar, the child reads that signal, and the prediction starts writing itself. A score that points to a fixed future is not a description of your child; it is a story someone is choosing to tell, and how a child is described shapes who they decide they are. There is a quieter system worry underneath all of this too. Policy bodies have started asking whether a genetic marker could flag a child early for extra support, and Thomas is careful: a tool this blunt risks hanging a label on a child it was never strong enough to read. The honest starting line is not a strand of DNA. It is where your child is right now, today, which already folds in their genes and everything they have lived, and which is the most useful thing any adult has ever had to work with.
Author Quote"
Genes are real. So is the half you shape, every single day.
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What you want is simple and enormous at the same time: a child who keeps believing the next thing is learnable, long after a number or a label tried to tell them otherwise. The system that hands out scores and predictions is not built to protect that belief, and it will keep producing tidy verdicts that sound like science and feel like ceilings. You are the one standing between your child and that quiet lowering of the bar. Nobody will ever advocate for what your child is capable of the way you will, and that is not a gap in the system to mourn; it is the most powerful position in your child’s whole education.
If you want tools that treat your child as changeable rather than sorted, an All Access membership gives you the full set of brain-building programs to work the underlying skills at home, at your child’s pace.
And a struggle in school rarely travels alone. The same child a score tried to flatten into one number is often juggling focus, working memory, or reading and math foundations all at once, each one changeable with the right kind of practice. That is exactly why All Access opens every program together, so you are building the whole child instead of chasing one label at a time.
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