Would be hesitant to give too much weight to the GCSE data. While I have no doubt there is some causal benefit of intelligence to GCSE performance, these exams are generally not that hard and the people who get the best grades tend to be the ones who have parents who make them study a lot (hence why many black Africans and Chinese Asians are doing so well). In short, they have very high returns to effort and parental engagement.
I suspect A-level (UK 16-18 exams) results would be a much better proxy for intelligence, as these are often the hardest exams all students in the UK ever take and have much lower returns to effort. There is a bit more noise in the sense that some students choose easier subjects (e.g music or geography) to inflate their grades, so there's probably a clearer signal in just looking at STEM grades. Just don't use the data from the last three years, as there has been absurd amount of grade inflation post-Covid
Would be hesitant to give too much weight to the GCSE data. While I have no doubt there is some causal benefit of intelligence to GCSE performance, these exams are generally not that hard and the people who get the best grades tend to be the ones who have parents who make them study a lot (hence why many black Africans and Chinese Asians are doing so well). In short, they have very high returns to effort and parental engagement.
I suspect A-level (UK 16-18 exams) results would be a much better proxy for intelligence, as these are often the hardest exams all students in the UK ever take and have much lower returns to effort. There is a bit more noise in the sense that some students choose easier subjects (e.g music or geography) to inflate their grades, so there's probably a clearer signal in just looking at STEM grades. Just don't use the data from the last three years, as there has been absurd amount of grade inflation post-Covid
I think African Americans are like 20% English and 5% indigenous on average so the gap between them and Caribbean blacks makes sense.