Study says success is genetic not private school related: views?

[DoMyBest]

What do you guys think? www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/forget-private-school-its-all-in-thegenes-hzxfj8nwd?utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social_Unspecified&UTMX=:The%20Times%20&%20The%20Sunday%20Times:Unspecified:Unspecified:

Home background has a huge impact- the educational background of the mother being more significant than the father apparently. There will be some genetic link to intelligence etc but also likely that well-educated parents who appreciate the benefits of education provide a home environment where children thrive educationally e.g lots of reading, being involved in conversations, trips out etc etc. It’s not necessarily about private school at all, but one might argue parents who choose to pay large sums of money for private school are invested in their children’s educational success. (Plenty of other parents are too- not suggesting that’s exclusive to private school parents).

I sound ridiculous but how you communicate is massively important. I think this is the major advantage of private schools.
I am not talking about accent, at all.
I interview people a lot and the biggest and most off putting aspect of interviews is poor communication: poor eye contact, mumbling and sometimes limited vocabulary.
Being articulate is so so important and massively underestimated. For most jobs you don’t need to be super clever, but you need to be understood.

I’ve not read the study you’ve linked to by the way. The corollary is that children who come from homes where there’s no reading, children aren’t involved in conversations introducing them to wide vocabulary, parents are poorly educated themselves, struggle to succeed, even if they themselves might be quite bright. Despite attempts to narrow the gap, e.g through Pupil Premium funding, its hugely difficult for schools to make up the difference for children with less advantaged home environments. That’s why Sure Start was such an important initiative- much if the disadvantage is already embedded by the time children reach school at 4.

I agree with the poster above. There can be a difference in the thousands of the number of words you have acquired by the time you are 5/6 depending on your home environment and that affects your ability to communicate effectively and attainment in the future- it’s hard to make up the gap.

You can also have inherited intelligence and be naturally gifted e.g at working with numbers, but that still needs nurturing- you still need to be taught, and again, the quality of that teaching, your own determination to succeed (resilience and drive) and other factors, e.g if you’re being bullied, all make an impact on the likely educational outcome.

Seems to be true here,my dc breezed through school got degrees and a masters without having to make much effort. Went to the local schools with pretty rubbish reputation got their degrees funded by their employer and ds got his masters funded as well.
Dn who is the same age as ds 29,only child, private school since age three, tutors to supplement the private school scraped two D's at A2 and has just gone to uni to do a mickey mouse degree much to SIL's relief as she didn't think he'd ever leave home in his home town probably because he was bored at the job his df got him through his connections. Most likely he will do the degree and go back home and back to the job his df got him seeing as he has just about as much gumption as a wet lettuce not surprised though seeing as SIL and BIL seem to have discouraged him from growing up and being independent.

We teach our children nothing but they learn everything from us - dh and I aspired to providing opportunities in order that our dds would excel academically but they've both matched our achievements, ie, struggled with A levels.Our close relatives have been academically gifted where the parent was so. I believe now, have battled the nature/nature debate, that it's genetics that gives the edge first and the desire to succeed second. Happy to be flamed on this.

Bioligifemini agreed: good communication skills probably top all others in terms of getting ahead in life. I have a friend who was severely dislexic and struggled academically but ended up building an empire. One thing he was great at at school? Acting, debating, making friends. Everyone loved him.

Nurture does affect life outcomes.

Outcomes aren't all about GCSE grades or A level points.

Any individual would do well to look at this sort of study and then carry on what they are doing to help their own kids in their own circumstances.

One thing I would say is in respect of exam results, dont flog your kids beyond their "level".They can learn a lot in entry level jobs. Maybe more than at a university course they are not particularly suited to.

Where’s hard work in all this?

My DH and his siblings all privately educated. One sister a teacher so doing well other sister unemployed as she quit her job in a shop because she wanted more 'me time' and DH drives a tractor.

I have degree and masters and want to do PhD but DD unexpectedly arrived was brought up on council estate and went to local sink school.

DD starts school in September and I have refused Pils offer of paying for private. We arelucky that we have 6 good offsted schools in the area and frankly I don't think it is necessary.

Where's hard work in all this?

I think that's a whole separate discussion, isn't it?
I was "naturally" bright and pretty much sailed through GCSEs and A Levels without particularly working hard. Other DC worked much harder than I did and didn't get as good results.

From a work place point of view, it is certainly not the case that working hard gets you ahead/more money!

I guess if child A and child B have "equal backgrounds" and opportunities and A works hard and B doesn't then you might expect A to do better. But if A works really hard and B works quite hard is there a difference? Possibly not ...

I think some people like to think the richest people and ones that can afford private school are also genetically superior and the most intelligent. It helps justify why they tend to get the best jobs, make all the political decisions and all the rest.

I think it's untrue, very intelligent children are born everyday into families that can't support or don't appreciate that intelligence, just as much as unintelligent children are born into families with money. Private education can make up for lower intelligence but state schools find it very difficult to make up for lack of educational support at home, even simple things like reading at bedtime.

I think it's ridiculous to say it doesn't help. It isn't everything, but of course it's going to help.

Small classes, more individual attention on its own will help. Not having the set of disinterested learners disrupting a lesson will help considerably too. Yes, private schools can have that as an issue, but typically much less.

My df went to a secondary modern. He got A-levels, the first person from his school to get them. His A-level maths teacher took the exam at the same time as him and got a lower grade. he could have come out with a string of As as very intelligent, very hard working and motivated.

Witchend that's my feeling based on experience too.

It would be interesting to look into how this study was conducted.

Since my schooling decisions are all made I'm passing on digging deeper!

From my prespective some of the most successful kids I know come from immigrant backgrounds with parents working 2 to 3 jobs to keep a roof over their heads. The parents may be working menial jobs but they made damn sure their kids worked hard & excelled in school... it fascinated dh & I, we got on very well with said parents but their childrens education was the most important thing to them so I would say hard work trumps nature certainly in my experiences..

Well ds is pretty successful, he comes from a pretty average background, he is gifted though which I'd say is entirely down to genetics in his case.
He sat GCSE's and A levels without making any effort, he turned down an unconditional offer for Cambridge and went to work in Local Government instead. They funded his degree and his masters which took little effort on his part in fact it's a joke he regularly has with his friends that it took them three years to get a degree and he took five days off work to complete his Masters. He is senior management now at late twenties and tipped for the top.
Do I think he would have done better with private education? Possibly, ds was bored an awful lot of the time in school and at university. Could private school have afforded him a bespoke education, who knows I imagine they have the same curriculum constraints as state education? He says school was the best days of his life not because of the education but the friendships and the fun he had.
He certainly learnt a lot about fostering good relationships anyway. It cemented his dislike of what he saw as enforced uniformity and the crushing of creativity and the mind numbing insistence of persevering with a known and familiar system even if inefficient and time consuming rather than researching and putting in place new and better systems which is something that has served him well in his career.
His motivation at work is to earn a good salary and the respect of his colleagues and I think they are inbuilt and nothing he would have got from a different education or background tbh.
I was reminded today that ds was somewhat of an exception when I spoke to someone in education about my dd who asked if I was related to ds (we have an unusual name). She remembers meetings 16 years ago with his school at the time when he was using his talents to run rings around the systems. She said she had always wondered what had become of him as he was a one off and was glad to hear he was successful.