Education system is 'stifling young innovators'

AN overly rigid education system is stifling the creativity and risk-taking behaviour of the next generation of innovators.

AN overly rigid education system is stifling the creativity and risk-taking behaviour of the next generation of innovators, with NSW Chief Scientist Mary O'Kane calling for a system of selective schools to teach entrepreneurial skills.

Professor O'Kane said successful innovators were often disengaged from the traditional school subjects and showed rule-breaking behaviour  and an independence of thoughts and attitudes that cast them as the bad students.

"We need to value the misfits, and better still the science nerds who will come up with next hi-tech advance, and get them into a selective school for little innovators," she said.

"We need for these kids to be valued in the school system and maybe taken off into a special environment which would help them flourish."

Professor O'Kane also said the school system had to allow students to fail, so they could learn from making mistakes and develop resilience, key factors in cultivating innovative ideas.

It would require an innovative approach from teachers to teach them the skills that underlie innovation, such as perseverance and taking risks, and to identify those with the aptitude.

Professor O'Kane's comments follow her delivery on Friday night at the Australian Catholic University of the annual Sir Harold Wyndham public lecture, named after a former NSW director-general of education responsible for broadening the curriculum in the early 1960s to include art, music, drama and industrial arts.

In her speech, Professor O'Kane said innovation was the key to overcoming Australia's falling productivity.

"We are good at teaching and generating knowledge, but not good at translating knowledge into wealth, turning it into skills, products and services," she said.