S'pore students are tops in global test of creative thinking

15-year-olds tested by OECD score higher than peers from 63 other education systems

- Sandra Davie

Singapore’s 15-year-olds came out tops in a global test of creative thinking with a score of 41 points, beating students from 63 other education systems.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted the test as part of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2022.

It found that six in 10 of the Singapore students tested attained the two highest proficiency levels (five or six), demonstrating the ability to generate original and diverse ideas for a wide range of problem-solving tasks and contexts which required expression and imagination.

This was more than twice the OECD average proportion and the highest proportion among all 64 participating systems.

Some 6,600 15-year-old students across all 149 secondary schools and 15 private schools here, including international schools and madrasahs, participated in the study conducted from April to May in 2022.

Students from South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia and Finland took the next few top positions, scoring significantly above the OECD average of 33 points.

The test was part of Pisa 2022, which released its first report in December 2023 when it placed Singapore’s 15-year-olds as No. 1 in mathematics, science and reading.

The OECD said it aimed to obtain insights into the students’ abilities through the test and questionnaire to generate, evaluate and improve ideas, as well as their attitudes and perceptions of the school and social environments related to creative thinking.

In the one-hour test, students were given tasks that required them to generate creative ideas, as well as evaluate and improve on ideas.

Full credit was awarded for uncommon ideas, while partial or no credit was awarded for common and conventional ideas.