Many school encourage or require that twins be placed in separate classrooms. But a study in Developmental Psychology finds that separating twins has no significant effect on their academic performance. Researchers analyzed data from two longitudinal studies–one from the United Kingdom that followed 8,705 twin pairs from ages 7 to 16 and one from Quebec that followed 426 twin pairs from ages 7 to 12. Overall, they found almost no effect of classroom separation on school achievement, cognitive ability or academic motivation. The researchers did find that twin pars placed in the same classroom had slightly more similar achievement scores, but the effect sizes were weak. (Monitor on Psychology)

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