Intelligence, Education, Sex, Socioeconomic Status, Migration
Intelligence and Education: What Really Explains Student Performance
Intelligence is by far the most important factor in education. No other variable influences so many different areas of life to a comparable degree. Drawing on the complete series of German IQB assessments of approximately 15-year-olds at the end of lower secondary education from 2009 to 2024, this book shows that intelligence is the strongest predictor of student performance. Once intelligence is controlled for, the residual effects of socioeconomic status shrink dramatically, sex differences remain robust but secondary, and migration background retains a substantial independent impact - especially among first-generation students. The national findings are complemented and confirmed by large-scale international studies such as PISA and PIAAC.
Educational research either completely ignores the concept of intelligence or disregards its own findings. This systematic omission is driven not by scientific considerations, but by ideological motives. By conveying a distorted picture in the media and the public sphere, educational research contributes to political misjudgments - with profound harmful consequences for society as a whole.
The book places the findings of national and international educational studies within the broader framework of national IQs, the Flynn Effect, Piagetian developmental stages, and the structure-genetic theoretical program of Georg Oesterdiekhoff. It shows how demographic change and migration from regions of lower cognitive ability are reducing the cognitive performance of Western societies. The findings have far-reaching implications for education policy as well as for the future cognitive profile, well-being, and survival of Western societies.
Clear, rigorous, and uncompromising, this book calls for an end to the taboo surrounding intelligence and for a constructive collaboration between educational research and the long-established science of differential psychology. Only by facing the evidence can education systems and societies hope to respond effectively to the challenges of the twenty-first century.
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