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Key points
- School grades at age 16 can predict one's financial and occupational situation in young adulthood.
- Independent of further education, results from GCSEs are strong indicators of one's lifestyle in their 20s.
- For students from poor families, good grades matter more for later success than for privileged students.
By Alexandra Starr
Undoubtedly, Albert Einstein was one of the smartest people in history. His work revolutionised theoretical physics, earned him a Nobel Prize, and fundamentally changed the way we understand the world. Yet, Einstein’s school grades were only mediocre: One of his teachers even told him that he would never achieve anything important in life — a prediction that clearly proved to be false. Perhaps your school grades don’t matter for who you become later in life?
Children are told from when they first enter school that good grades are the key to success. Good school grades unlock possibilities for further educational qualifications that pupils pursue after leaving school, and how well they will do, for example in terms of earning high university grades. Attaining better educational qualifications will in turn benefit someone’s chances of getting a job, making good money, and living a fulfilled life.
An alternative viewpoint is that school grades only matter for climbing the next rung of the education ladder, like going to university. In the real world, school grades may hold little relevance for success. For example, high earnings and one’s happiness in life. The rationale behind this perspective is that grades during the school years reflect traits that are only important for school but not for other practical aspects of everyday life. For example, being a bookworm and diligently doing homework are unlikely to prepare you for pitching a new idea to your boss or negotiating a higher salary.
To find out if school grades matter or not for later life, we studied the effect of GCSE results at age 16 on developmental outcomes at age 23, including university performance, job status, income, and financial attitudes, as well as whether a person showed behaviour problems or anxiety symptoms, their level of alcohol consumption, and their overall well-being. GCSEs are exams taken by all students in the UK school system at the age of 16 years. They are not only a prerequisite for further education, but reflect the level of achievement in a broad range of subjects, and students are advised to spend long hours on revisions in preparation for exams. We looked at data from about 6,500 school students who were born between 1994 and 1996 in England and Wales and took their GCSEs between 2010 and 2013. Our study has recently been accepted for publication in the journal Developmental Psychology.
GCSE Grades as Indicators of Future Paths
We found that GCSE grades at age 16 predicted what your life looked like at age 23. A first and much expected finding was that students who excelled in their GCSEs were much more likely to attend university, and almost half of them achieved a first-class degree. By comparison, less than 10% of the students who struggled passing their GCSEs went on to complete a university degree. Only about 1% of them received a first-class degree.
But the effect of school grades extended far beyond climbing the educational ladder: School grades also explained about 3% of the differences in people’s income. Although that might sound like a rather small effect, it translates into a sizeable difference in actual income: Top GCSE performers may earn up to £1,000 more per month at age 23 when compared to the lowest GCSE performing students.
Our findings also showed that our participants differed greatly in the type of jobs they performed in their 20s. Statistically, school grades accounted for about 7% of whether the young adults in our study had a more or less prestigious job. In real-world terms, this means that those with excellent GCSE results most likely worked as highly qualified professionals and technicians when they reached their 20s. Their less successful peers most commonly held jobs as personal service workers and in retail — occupations which are often viewed as less prestigious and also earn lower salaries.
School grades indicated how people develop socially and emotionally: On average, students with better GCSEs had fewer behaviour problems, such as becoming involved in physical fights, bullying, or violence, and they reported feeling more satisfied with their lives in their 20s.
The next finding surprised us: The role of school grades on all these outcomes was independent of getting more education after school. This means, for example, that irrespective of whether someone will go on to pursue a university degree or not, their school grades at the end of secondary school will predict their occupational, financial, and social-emotional development in young adulthood.
Widening Participation in University
The achievement gap between students coming from highly educated, wealthy families and those brought up under less privileged conditions has long been reported. On average, students from poorer family backgrounds are less likely to attend university and complete a degree. Our findings shed some light on how this persistent family background disadvantage may be overcome.
In our study, achieving good GCSEs mattered more for students from less affluent backgrounds than for students from richer families for going on to university. A likely reason is that students from poorer families must rely on their own hard schoolwork, when trying to climb the educational ladder. By contrast, students from more privileged backgrounds may have other resources to compensate in case they only achieved mediocre grades. For example, having the financial means to complete unpaid internships in leading businesses over the summer and receiving intense, personal tutoring by a subject matter expert, might outweigh the effect of only average school grades on your CV.
Doing well in school is not going to make family background inequalities in education disappear. But for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, acing their GCSEs is a sure way to gain access to the education opportunities that offer prosperous life chances. Schools and teachers need to be funded to ensure they can support students from poorer families to achieve the best grades they can.
5 Ways School Grades Shape Your Future
Contrary to the common belief that school grades only determine university admissions, we found that their influence goes much further. Our findings support five reasons why working hard in school matters for our adult life.
- Good school grades can help you find a well-paid, prestigious job in your 20s.
- Good school grades can allow you to earn a higher income in your 20s.
- Good school grades might lower the risk for problematic social behaviour and make you happier about your life.
- Good school grades can mean that you outperform your fellow students at university.
- Good school grades can help you get into university and earn a degree, even if you’re from backgrounds underrepresented at university.
