Aussie Kids Excel in Creative Thinking

The Australian school system has its detractors, but it is producing students who are strong in a crucial future world skill.

Ranking among high performing school systems like Singapore, Korea and Finland, Australia featured near the top of the first-ever creative thinking assessment under the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Results of the global assessment, held in 2022, show that students in high-performing education systems succeed in standardised mathematics, reading and science tests and in new creative thinking tests.

Students were asked to think of original and diverse solutions for simple expressive tasks and familiar problems, like coming up with an interesting story idea or thinking of different ways to conduct an awareness-raising campaign in school.

PISA 2022 Results (Volume III): Creative Minds, Creative Schools found that students from disadvantaged backgrounds scored significantly lower than other students in creative thinking, pointing to both the challenging environment many of these students endure and curriculums in under-resourced schools, which often side-line creative activities and practices.

The assessment also found a gender gap in creative thinking in most education systems, with girls out-performing boys across all types of creative thinking tasks.

While girls performed relatively better than boys in reading and they performed at a similar level as boys in mathematics, girls’ performance advantage in creative thinking remained significant in around half of all countries and economies even after accounting for reading or mathematics performance.

About three quarters of students (78%) demonstrated a baseline level of creative thinking proficiency, meaning they could think of appropriate ideas for a range of tasks and begin to suggest original ideas for familiar problems. However, in 20 low-performing countries and economies, more than half of students struggled to reach this baseline level.

Academic excellence is not a pre-requisite for students to demonstrate proficiency in creative thinking. Results show that individual students can excel in creative thinking without excelling in core academic domains.

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said, “This assessment measures the capacity of students to generate, evaluate and improve ideas in four different areas - creative writing, visual expression, scientific problem solving and social problem solving - providing governments with data to help students and young people reach their full potential in our changing economies and societies.”