Aussie teens near top of world rankings for creative thinking

Australian teenagers are more creative and imaginative than students in the high-performing economies of Hong Kong or Germany, a new global study reveals. But a top scientist has one reservation.

More than 13,000 Australian students were tested for creative thinking in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment, scoring a mean result of 37 out of 60. Picture: iStock

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Australian teenagers are more creative and imaginative than students in the high-performing economies of Hong Kong or Germany, a new global study reveals.

The Australian Council for Educational Research has revealed Australia ranks fourth out of 64 countries in terms of the creative thinking and problem-solving ability of 15-year-old students.

More than 13,000 Australian students were tested for creative thinking in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment, scoring a mean result of 37 out of 60.

Australia’s result was higher than the average score of 33 across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Singapore boasts the world’s most creative students, with 41, followed by Korea and Canada with 38.

Australian girls showed better creative thinking skills than boys.

Teenage girls’ mean score was 39, compared to 36 for boys.

Students from the wealthiest families scored nine points higher than those from the poorest families. And First Nations students scored eight points lower than non-Indigenous students.

The creative thinking assessment – used for the first time in 2022 – asked students to think of ideas for short stories, write captions for cartoons, create online posters and suggest ways to make libraries more accessible for people in wheelchairs.

ACER report lead author Lisa De Bortoli said 88 per cent of Australian students met the baseline standard – 10 percentage points higher than the OECD average.

“Our findings provide insight into how imaginative, adventurous, confident and capable Australia’s 15-year-olds are in their creative thinking and how it is being fostered in classrooms across the country,’’ she said.

Neuroscientist Alan Finkel, a former chief scientist, said it was wonderful to see students “think out of the box’’ but they must also master basic knowledge.

“To be successful in their future careers, our students’ creative thinking capability has to sit above a foundation of core knowledge and skills in science, reading and mathematics,’’ he said.

“We still have a long way to go to achieve top-ranking status in these areas, so we need to raise the bar of expectations for every student. We need to provide teachers with high-quality instructional resources and classroom time, so that they can deliver equity and excellence across our student population.’’

Dr Finkel said creative thinking would be essential in the age of artificial intelligence.

“Given the tendency of AI to hallucinate from time to time, our young people will need to be able to spot the errors,’’ he said

Australian students’ performance stalled in the latest PISA maths, science and reading tests.

They revealed that 15-year-olds from the poorest 25 per cent of families are performing, on average, at the level expected of 10-year-olds in maths, science and reading.