A DNA revolution is coming to our schools, and teachers need to be ready for it. 

That’s the message from behavioural geneticists like Robert Plomin in the UK and Paige Harden in the US, who have been arguing for years that we are approaching a world in which what happens in the classroom will be informed by what we know about pupils’ genetic make up.

Speaking to Tes in 2019, Plomin explained that “teachers cannot ignore that DNA differences are the biggest systematic difference between kids, not just in learning abilities but behaviour problems”. Greater acknowledgement of this fact, Plomin believes, could help to improve education for everyone.

The idea of teachers being guided by genetics might sound like little more than science fiction, but in March last year, we came one step closer to the prospect of using DNA data in the context of education, with the publication of a new polygenic risk score for educational attainment: EA4.

This comes on the back of the publication of EA3, which, in 2018, already had the power to explain 11 to 13 per cent of individual differences in how long people stay in education, and 7 to 10 per cent of individual differences in cognitive ability.

It’s the rapid advancement of the research in this area that has led me to spend over a decade trying to start a public conversation about genes and education.

And yet that conversation still isn’t happening. 

Discussions have taken place between small groups of scientists, practitioners, activists and policymakers about whether we could ever use DNA data in the same way that we use demographic data, to predict risk of poor educational outcomes and to allocate additional support in schools and nurseries. But such discussions haven’t crossed over into mainstream education discourse. 

There are a lot of good reasons for this. I think it’s fair to say that the prospect of using DNA data in the context of education is perceived as an interesting but not particularly pressing issue. In recent years, the UK has been dealing with the repercussions of a global pandemic, a split from the European Union and a rising cost-of-living crisis. Specifically within education, challenges like the teacher recruitment and retention crises have understandably taken precedence.

But if we miss the chance to have this conversation - and if the science continues to progress very rapidly (as I believe it will) - we could soon find ourselves faced with a raft of unwanted consequences.

So why is all of this so important? One reason is that, when it comes to GCSE grades, researchers can currently predict around 15 per cent of the differences between pupils by making use of a polygenic score, like EA4, comprising many genetic variants that appear to be associated with educational outcomes. 

That’s very similar to the accuracy of predictions we can make based on the metric of family income. As we already use family income to make predictions about pupils’ outcomes, and as a basis for allocating resources, it is not unreasonable to suggest we could do something similar with DNA data. 

Whether we would actually want to do this is up for debate. But if we don’t talk about it, the decisions will be taken by politicians, with little input from the majority of people those decisions will affect: teachers and students.  

Another reason the education sector needs to start talking about this is that commercial companies are already offering access to polygenic scores for a relatively small fee. In most cases, this involves DNA that is gathered postnatally (from adults) with screening focused primarily on physical health, ancestry and aspects of appearance - like whether our hair is likely to be curly or straight - rather than educational outcomes. However, some companies are already willing to go further than this and there have been discussions about whether such information could, or should, be used prenatally. 

In a study published in Science in February, a large sample of US adults was asked about the decisions they would be willing to make when choosing which IVF embryo to implant. They were told to assume that 3 per cent of young people would go to a top-100 college and that if they chose the embryo with the highest polygenic score for cognitive ability, the chance would increase to 5 per cent for their child. The study’s authors found that 38 per cent of the sample said they would be willing to do this. As journalist Antonio Regalado put it in a tweet on the day this study was published: “The message from this poll is that the public is not that revulsed by consumer eugenics (so long as you don’t call it that of course).”

Given that these questions reflect our beliefs about what it is to be human, and what (who) we value, it is important to take our answers to them seriously and to educate young people to be able to engage meaningfully with them. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people simply don’t have the genetic or genomic literacy to be able to do this, currently. You don’t have to take my word for it - several people have done large-scale studies that show this, both in the UK and in other countries around the world.

Robert Chapman and colleagues at Goldsmiths College in London asked more than 5,000 people, spread across 78 countries, what they knew about genetics and what their attitudes were towards using findings from genetic research, or even DNA data, as part of personal decision making. Almost 90 per cent of this sample had been educated to degree level and yet the average mark on a short and basic genetic literacy test was just 65 per cent. What was particularly worrying was that 30 per cent of the sample believed that conditions such as schizophrenia and autism were caused by a single gene, suggesting that the reality - that human health and behaviour are usually associated with the effects of many, many genes interacting in complex ways with each other and with the environment - has almost entirely eluded people. 

It was clear in this study, and in another, carried out by Basima Almomani and colleagues with a large, well-educated sample of adults in Jordan, that while participants could answer basic questions about what a genome is, and about the primary function of genes, their knowledge was much lower when asked about polygenicity (the idea that heritability is explained by multiple genetic variants) and about how our genomes interact with our environments to influence behaviour. 

Researchers in Norway and Brazil, led by Rebecca Carver, found a similar pattern with a sample of students and called at that time - in 2017 - for curriculum change to address it. Meanwhile, in a project led by my collaborator, Madeline Crosswaite, we found a pattern of low knowledge of the genetic underpinnings of cognitive ability in UK teachers - including science teachers. 

Why does this matter? Well, if, as a society, we don’t know or understand how our behaviour is linked with our DNA, then it will prove almost impossible for us to keep up with scientific and technological advances in genomics, and their ethical and social implications - for education, and beyond.

So, what can we do about this? To me, the answer is obvious. We need to consider how genetics is taught and assessed in schools. 

If we look at the UK national curriculum for key stage 4 biology, it is initially difficult to see why research finds such a lack of knowledge in society. Of the 12 key learning points listed in the ‘Evolution, inheritance and variation’ section of the curriculum, two read: “how the genome, and its interaction with the environment, influence the development of the phenotype of an organism” and “most phenotypic features being the result of multiple rather than single genes”. All good stuff. 

But, when we look at the Department for Education’s subject criteria, which is published by Ofqual and used by exam boards as the starting point to develop their specifications, the problem starts to become clearer. 

The 30-point criteria for the topic of ‘Inheritance, variation and evolution’ makes just two mentions of genomics. Pupils are required to “describe simply how the genome, and its interaction with the environment, influence the development of the phenotype of an organism” and to “recall that most phenotypic features are the result of multiple genes rather than single gene inheritance”. 

While these are almost word-for-word copies of the national curriculum statements, the prominence of genotype-interplay and polygenicity has been massively reduced, from two out of 12 statements to two out of 30 - that, theoretically, amounts to a drop from 17 per cent of the module to just 7 per cent. 

Beyond that, and possibly more importantly, language like “describe simply” and “recall” makes it likely that teaching and learning will focus on pupils committing a few basic facts to memory. By contrast, when we look at other statements in the same topic, GCSE biology students are asked to “explain” the advantages and disadvantages of sexual and asexual reproduction in a range of species; to “predict” the result of single gene crosses; and to “explain” the impact of Darwin and Wallace’s ideas on modern biology - all tasks that require much more sophisticated engagement.

The curriculum might be where the problem kicks in, but it is also where it can be tackled - by adjusting the subject criteria that exam boards are required to work from. 

Simply teaching pupils to recall a couple of facts doesn’t help them to grasp the implications of those facts; they need to understand how genes work with environments to make people differ in their academic attainment, motivation, personality and physical and mental health. 

This matters because in the studies described earlier, led by Chapman and Almomani, those with greater genetic knowledge tended to have less deterministic views and more concerns about the potential uses of genetic and genomic science, making them better equipped to participate in discussions about how we use DNA data. 

And that’s not all. Incorporating modern behavioural genomics into the biology curriculum could help to support a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. US researcher Brian Donovan and colleagues showed how, when students with good genetic literacy were exposed to an intervention that was designed to enhance understanding of human genetic variation and race, they became less likely to assume that differences in cognitive ability and behaviour were explained by race. In other words, the intervention - combined with a good level of genetic literacy - appeared to offer an effective way to tackle racism.

If we get this right, we have the chance to ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to become genetically literate. GCSE biology alone might not be enough, but it’s a start.

This genetic literacy can support involvement in fundamental decision making about the type of society we want; it can increase acceptance of diversity and understanding of inequalities in society; and it can make that conversation I keep banging on about possible.

So, how do we move forward and make this happen? Well, in the first instance, my colleagues and I at the University of York are running a series of focus groups with leading UK biology teachers to see what they think about all of this and to better understand barriers to change. 

Together we will try to build a consensus around whether the biology curriculum should take modern genomics into account, and how teachers could be supported to make this happen. We will then engage with the DfE, Ofqual and the exam boards, as well as bodies such as the Royal Society of Biology, to find a way forward. 

And, in the process, we might get one or two steps closer to finally getting the education sector talking about the genetic revolution that is almost on their doorstep.

Professor Kathryn Asbury is the director of research for the department of education at the University of York