NZ students' ranking for creative thinking was the fifth-highest of the 81 participating nations. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
New Zealand's 15-year-olds are among the best in the world for creative thinking, according to a rare piece of good news from the OECD's Pisa tests.
The 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test measured creative thinking for the first time and this country's average score of 36 was the fifth-highest of the 81 participating nations.
"Aotearoa New Zealand's average score was lower than just 4 other countries/economies - Singapore (41), Korea (38), Canada (38) and Australia (37) - and similar to that of Estonia and Finland. Fifty-seven countries/economies scored significantly lower than Aotearoa New
Zealand in creative thinking," the report said.
In the same round of tests New Zealand ranked 10th in reading, 11th in science and 23rd in maths though its scores dropped in all three subjects.
Low participation meant this country's scores were likely to be skewed upward, but so too were the scores of some other participants.
Singapore was number one in all subjects. Albania had the lowest score for creativity, with 13 points.
The report said more than a third of New Zealand students scored highly on creative thinking.
"Compared to other countries/economies, a relatively large proportion (39 percent) of Aotearoa New Zealand students were 'top' creative thinkers and most (86 percent) performed at or above baseline proficiency.
"Expressing creativity through writing and social problem solving was a strength of Aotearoa New Zealand students, as was generating diverse and creative ideas. They did less well in scientific problem solving, visual expression and evaluating and improving ideas."
Pisa tested students on their ability to generate ideas that are different to each other, that are both novel and useful ("If relatively few other students suggest the same idea, a response is considered original.") and to evaluate ideas and improve their originality.
"Pisa focusses on the type of creativity that all people can demonstrate in everyday situations such as creating a delicious meal with food in the pantry or solving everyday problems," the report said.
A sample question asked students to provide three possible titles for a picture of an upright giant book in a field with a fruit tree and a chair situated between its open pages.
Students would get no credit for titles such as "the giant book", but full credit for titles such as "the perfect story" or "the written trail".
Another question asked students to improve on the idea of installing a ramp to allow wheelchair users to access books at all levels of a library.
Students received partial credit for suggesting an electronic ramp and full credit for suggesting a rough surface so wheels would not slip, or a ramp that moved based on wheelchair users' verbal instructions.
The report said good performance in creative thinking was closely linked to good performance in reading and maths, but in New Zealand students did better than expected given their reading and maths scores.
Around the world, girls outperformed boys in creative thinking.
"In most participating countries, girls scored higher than boys and in the remaining countries they scored similar to boys. In no countries did boys score higher than girls. In Aotearoa New Zealand, girls scored 3 points higher than boys and 2 points higher than gender diverse students," the report said.
The most advantaged 25 percent of New Zealand students scored an average of 42 points, while the least advantaged 25 percent scored an average of 31 points.
The report said the difference between the two groups was higher than OECD average.
"In Aotearoa New Zealand, 17 percent of the variation observed in creative thinking performance was explained by student's socio-economic background, significantly higher than the OECD average of 12 percent."
University of Auckland education professor Stuart McNaughton told RNZ the results were something to celebrate.
"This is something we identify in a lot of our curriculum documents. It's woven through a lot of what we set as resources for teachers," he said.
"The idea that our 15 year olds are among the best in the world at being creative is a great outcome and speaks to a wider significance about what we value in terms of outcomes and success for our children."
McNaughton said Singapore showed that being successful in reading, maths and science was not mutually exclusive with creativity.
"Anybody's who's been in some high-performing Singapore classrooms for maths or reading for that matter, in other words literature, and science, would know that there's a lot of problem-solving, going beyond the obvious, taking place in those classrooms," he said.
The report said students who spent more than an hour a day using computers for learning and leisure performed better on the creative thinking assessment even after accounting for students' socio-economic background.
It found New Zealand students reported close to the average level of encouragement of creativity from their teachers and below-average participation in creative activities such as art and drama classes.
The report said about half a million students from 81 countries/economies, including 37 OECD countries, took part in Pisa 2022.
In New Zealand, almost 4700 students from 169 English-medium schools took part in the study in term 3 of 2022.
The main results were published in December 2023.