Pupils who get good grades are usually also popular

Stereotypes about unpopular swots are persistent - not least because of their often-clichéd depiction in the media. Using data from a large-scale study, a research team from the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology at the University of Tübingen and the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB) at Berlin's Humboldt University has now investigated how well high-performing pupils really are socially integrated. Dr. Claudia Neuendorf, who now researches at the University of Potsdam, headed the project. She found that young people who get good grades are generally also better integrated in their classes than those with poorer grades. High-performing pupils are also asked for help far more often than those that perform worse. This was most obvious among young boys and girls who do well in several subjects. These findings contradict the common cliché that young people who do well at school are subjected to more teasing and tend to be solitary.