German pupils show average creativity in PISA tests, coming in alongside their peers in France, the Netherlands and Spain, but well behind those in Australia, Canada and South Korea, results published on Tuesday showed.
The Programme for International Student Assessment run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tests young people aged 15 and 16 once every three years in reading, maths and science. The results of the last major survey, conducted in 2022, were presented in December.
The current results emerged from a special assessment of creative ability taken alongside the standard tests. Some 5,900 pupils in Germany took the creativity test.
Participants were for example asked to write down three ideas within five minutes that would raise awareness of the significance of bees. Another test was to fill in speech bubbles in a comic, and yet another was to change a placard with a view of space so that it suited the theme "Living in Space."
Doris Lewalter of Munich's Technical University said the test aimed to ascertain whether the pupils could think up an original idea, develop unusual ideas and come up with several ideas on the same question.
"The point is to solve social and scientific problems and to express oneself in writing and visually," she said.
The evaluation showed that capacity for creative thinking was linked to core competencies in maths, reading and science, according to a university statement.
The study concluded that creative thinking shows a similar pattern to the standard test. East Asian countries lead, while Latin America brings up the rear. Outliers were Australia and New Zealand, where high creativity was seen alongside only modest results in maths.
In all OECD countries, girls showed greater creativity than boys, and this pattern was even more marked in Germany.
All the studies showed considerable variation, with socially disadvantaged pupils and pupils from immigrant families in Germany performing less well, according to the Education Ministry.