11 Plus Exams Forum

Are you born being able to do well at school or can anyone do well? Is it nature or nurture that gets you to the top of the class?

I would reckon a mixture of both. However in a home where education is valued the nature will be helped to shine

Think nature makes up a huge percentage of the success..... however you need the nurture (from someone - not necessarily the parents) on top of this to get anywhere...



reminds me of someone who lived near me who thought money (and her husband had made plenty) could by anything... was chatting to her son's prep school head about her son....

"Well Mrs T, you know one simply can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear..."

I think it is probably that you are born that way both for being brainy or good at something like art or sport. Of course nurture might bring out the best. I have 3 children, their "nurture" has been similar obviously but they have very different strengths academically, socially, physically. I do think you can probably make up some ground by dedicating some time and effort but for example I just don't think my DD1 will ever be excellent at maths...she just does not get it (but hasn't really ever wanted to do the extra work either though ) She has been able to draw well since she was a baby though..

The book "Bounce, How champions are made" by Matthew Syed explores this topic, and makes a very interesting read, it puts forward the theory that it is nuture and circumstances that produce excellence in sport, music and intelligence rather than genes. Before I read the book I was convinced that you were either born clever or not but now I am not so sure, the same goes for music sports etc.
In the playground look at the parents of the kids on the top table and then the parents of the kids on the bottom table (talking out of the equation children with disabilities or special needs) and you will see a difference in attitude, I certainly notice it when I am with them

I think that the parental attitude to learning and the environment provided by said parents has a huge affect on a child's own attitude to learning and their achievement, however, surely there has to be some raw material there to work with in the first place.

As you can imagine this has been the subject of a huge number of studies! The most informative have been with identical twins reared apart.... fortunately this rarely happens, in the absence of parents you certainly need your twin.

I have just copied this from Wiki
The relative influence of genetics and environment for a trait can be calculated by measuring how strongly traits covary in people of a given genetic (unrelated, siblings, fraternal twins, or identical twins) and environmental (reared in the same family or not) relationship. The most common method is to consider identical twins reared apart, with any similarities which exists between such twin pairs attributed to genotype. In terms of correlation statistics, this means that theoretically the correlation of tests scores between monozygotic twins would be 1.00 if genetics alone accounted for variation in IQ scores; likewise, siblings and dizygotic twins share on average half of their alleles and the correlation of their scores would be 0.50 if IQ were affected by genes alone. Practically, however, the upper bound of these correlations are given by the reliability of the test, which tends to be 0.90 to 0.95 for typical IQ tests[9]



Same person (tested twice) .95
Identical twins—Reared together .86
Identical twins—Reared apart .76
Fraternal twins—Reared together .55
Fraternal twins—Reared apart .35
Biological siblings—Reared together .47
Biological siblings—Reared apart .24
Unrelated children—Reared together .30
Parent-child—Living together .42
Parent-child—Living apart .22
Adoptive parent–child—Living together .19[13]


Of course the "environmental influences" start early can can be prenatal nutrition and environment, birth experience (weight / oxygen etc etc), later of course there are the effects of illness, neglect / nurturing etc etc.. For example fraternal twins are slightly closer than biological siblings - (twins having had the same prenatal environment)

There was an interesting programme on tv a few weeks ago. As part of it they interviewed some twins who were separted at school by the old 11 plus/ secondary modern system many years ago. The boy at the grammar went on to uni, the other left school with no formal qualifications and went into an apprenticeship. They were both successful but in different ways and always assumed that one was "brighter" than the other. Many years later they were both IQ tested - I cant remember why, and their IQ's were the same.

This story seems to imply both - the IQ level seems to be genetic but what they achieved was dependant on the opportunities offered to them.

Minesatea wrote:This story seems to imply both - the IQ level seems to be genetic but what they achieved was dependant on the opportunities offered to them.

Yes and also perhaps on the self- motivation/character of individual

I think self belief is one of the key things too - many women in the past were told that education was not for them / not ladylike etc etc ...