Tag Archives: genes

G is for Genes, by Kathryn Asbury and Robert Plomin, makes a very strong case for something most teachers, and probably many parents, know already. Children are not blank slates.  Young people inherit as much as 60 – 70% of their aptitude for maths, for example.  Asbury and Plomin’s book makes a nonsense of successive education ministers’ attempts to expect state schools to compete with public schools when the latter are able to select pupils by ability.  Furthermore some pupils achieve despite attending a poor school, and some will never achieve even if with the very best teaching.  So what is the answer? A more diverse curriculum, one that does not expect the same from every pupil.