11 plus

[mistymom]

Hi my dd is in yr6 and working at a level 4a. She is doing small practise tests at home for her 11 plus. Her scores range from 30% up to 80% on all papers, is this normal to have a gap this big in %. She does these tests every other day and each test is different. What do you all think, is she likely to get a place at grammer as shes set here heart on going there. Thanks in advance. x

Spent some idle moments thinking that this would be a very interesting area for a twins study, because the interaction between genetics, 'informal exposure' and 'direct teaching' is potentially complex.

It would be really interesting to see the differences between:

• Identical twins, taught in the same class (all factors virtually identical)
• Identical twins, taught in parallel classes or different schools (only formal teaching different)
• Fraternal twins, taught in the same class (only genetics different)
• Fraternal twins, taught in different classes
• Separated twins of each type (these are rare, but exist): same / different genetics, different formal teaching and different informal exposure.

It would also be interesting to research the different outcomes for natural children raised with adopted siblings - same informal exposure but different genetic inheritance. Certainly in my extended family, within which there are adopted children and natural children, although the informal exposure is the same and the formal teaching quite similar (as in the same type of schooling, but not in identical classes at the same time) the outcomes are VERY different and are in line with what might be expected from the different genetic backgrounds of the adopted and natural children.

DS1 is friends with a pair of fraternal twins of 16 who are very different academically .

Which would suggest (as formal teaching and informal exposure are likely to be pretty much the same for fraternal twins raised in the same family) that the different genetics DOES play a part.

I was friends with a fraternal twin who was upset throughout her secondary schooling that her sister was always top of the class, while she was bottom. (Grammar school, so both reasonably intelligent).

I have certainly heard of children who have been adopted by parents of very average intelligence who go on to excel academically. Michael Gove himself might be an obvious example.

The interesting part for me is not that some IQ is genetically inherited but how transformable our brains really might be.

I agree - the interesting part is looking at how the factors combine, and what we can do to affect outcomes (e.g. is it more effective to give children informal exposure as an early intervention, or is it more effective to focus on formal teaching?). But I feel that in failing to recognise that children are different, with different genetic predispositions (in some pretence that if only we exposed all children to the same experiences and the same formal teaching they would all end up in the same place) we could easily fail to celebrate the huge successes children make in their progress from where they are, and might instead regard them as failing because they had not reached the norm we expected. The interesting question is how great that progress can be made to be by removing barriers and providing opportunities, while acknowledging that starting points may be very different.

I might have to share the 'cooker' analogy again (well actually it's Guy Claxton's) as I like it so much, teacherwith2kids :):

Imagine the genetic component of 'intelligence' is like the size of a kitchen cooker. Someone may have three cooking rings and a single oven, someone else has four rings and two ovens. These will set different hypothetical limits on the meals they can produce. But in practice, the quality and variety of their food generally reflects quite different things: how interested in cooking they are; who they can call for advice when a sauce curdles; and so on. In practice, neither of the cooks with the different sized cookers is anywhere near the limit of their cooking 'potential'. Any differences in their meals are much more likely to reflect differences in interest, experience and support than they do the addition of another burner or a fan-assisted oven.'

Interesting when you apply this analogy to outcomes in exams & more broadly in life. Syed believes a 'minor intellect' can become a 'major genius'.

However, experiences of fraternal twins and adopted children as outlined above might suggest that even when all the other factors are equal, there is a 'size of the cooker' factor at play....

Yes but as Claxton says size isn't everything :)

Need to go down the full 'search for peer reviewed journals' route, but did find the following about twins studies:
"An estimate of the heritability of a trait tries to indicate how much of the variance of that given trait is due to genetic differences. This number is characterized by a decimal, or .XX. Some have argued that this estimate is as high as .75, meaning that fully 75% of all IQ variances can be attributed to genetic differences. Studies have shown this to be high, except in monozygotic (MZ) twins raised together. These twins share the same exact genotype. In this case, the correlation was as high as .88. In the study of MZ twins raised apart, the correlation was as high as .75. In contrast, Dizygotic twins, who share 50% of their genes on average, had a correlation factor of .53 when growing up together and .46 when raised separately. This seems to indicate that similarity of a genetic component has a direct influence on IQ scores."

This is turning into a very interesting and highly academic thread - blown away by the intellect!