IQ, particularly natural innate IQ, has long been ignored by educational psychologists and educational officials in western countries as a cause of school achievement, with the prevailing view being that socioeconomic background and school quality are the main determinants. The present study strongly contradicts this view, finding that the national performance of 15-year-olds on the internationally recognized PISA test of ninth-grade high school achievement is almost perfectly predicted by innate IQ as measured by the nonverbal and culture-free Raven’s Progressive Matrices test. The findings further suggest that the child’s innate IQ interacts with school learning such that above-average IQs facilitate learning whereas below-average IQs inhibit learning, and that this two-way effect becomes stronger as the level of learning becomes more difficult. This in turn supports a national education policy of separate high schools or separate teaching in high schools whereby high ability students are given an advanced curriculum that allows them to reach their full academic potential while the curriculum for lower ability students concentrates more on basic numeracy and literacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the important role of innate IQ in determining national cognitive capital.
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