Evaluation of general understanding on genetics subject of high school students

Genetics is one of the important topics in the high school biology curriculum. Genetics has been taught in the subject of biology at grade 9 and grade 12. To investigate the general understanding of genetics of high school students, a survey was carried out and got responses from participants of 901 high school students across the country. The data for the average score was 3.3; median 3.0; scores ranging from 0.33 to 8.33. The data analyses showed that there was no significant difference in the results between urban and rural regions. The general knowledge of genetics of high school students was low. In general, scores of students in gifted schools were higher than in non-gifted schools. In the group of gifted schools, the biological group gave higher results than others. In general, the students tend to choose the subject Biology and have high average scores, also got survey scores higher than those of other groups. Those results contribute to clarifying the reality of learning Biology in general and Genetics in particular of high school students, contributing to the basis for educational administrators to provide more appropriate educational policies.