Today academic performance continues to be understood as a precise proxy foraptitude and is a core determinant of career paths and status achievement eventhough some doubt its value ( chammore-premuzic & furnham, 2010)Academic performance is vital to understanding the development of today’s wellknown psychometric “tool” : the intelligence test.
Because academic performancewas thought to mirror individual differences in ability, it became the top criterionfor intelligence tests(Chamorro-premuzic, 2006)Alfred Binnet(1857-1911) developed the pioneer intelligence test to identifychildren who were challenged by the school curriculum and their academicperformance. Future ability tests continued to be validated by educationalachievement as accurate measures of intelligence. Indeed if an intelligence testfailed to account for individual differences it was not regarded as a meaningfulmeasure of intellectual capacity(e.g Bolton 1892)
