Students’ capacity for creative thinking depends on both internal resources and external factors (OECD, 2022[1]; OECD, 2023[2]). To what extent does performance in creative thinking depend on student and school characteristics? This chapter examines the between- and within-school variation in creative thinking within countries and economies, and considers performance differences by various student characteristics (e.g. gender, socio-economic status and immigrant background) and school characteristics (e.g. school socio-economic profile, school type, school location and study programmes).

Variation in student performance in creative thinking can be broken down into differences at the student, school and education system levels. Across OECD countries, only about 8% of the variation in creative thinking performance lies between countries and economies (Figure III.3.1). Across all participating countries and economies, the share of the variation in creative thinking performance attributable to differences across education systems is about 25%.

Within-system variation in student performance is substantial compared to between-system variation. Examining the variation in performance within each country/economy provides an indication of whether students within the same education system have been offered similar opportunities to develop creative thinking skills. Within-system variation includes two components: within-school variation (i.e. performance differences between students from the same school) and between-school variation (i.e. performance differences between groups of students from different schools). Identifying where the major variation in creative thinking performance lies within each country is important from a policy perspective to inform interventions that might support creative thinking.

The variation in performance between schools is a measure of how big “school effects” are. These school effects may reflect selection or school tracking mechanisms that determine which school students attend; they may be the result of differences in policies and practices across different schools; or they may reflect differences in how parents select schools for their children to attend (e.g. electing for private education). School effects might also arise from differences in the diversity of the student populations within them: differences in student intake are the result of many factors such as schools’ admission policies, local school competition (i.e. the number of schools available to students), and school catchment areas (i.e. the relative integration or segregation of families with varying socio-economic status within the same neighbourhood).

In general, school characteristics do not play a dominant role in explaining student performance in creative thinking (see Box III.3.1). The between-school variation in creative thinking performance amounts to around one-quarter (26%) of the variation in creative thinking performance observed within countries/economies, on average across OECD countries, with the remaining variation (74%) due to differences in student performance within the same schools (Figure III.3.1). This means that it is the characteristics of students themselves (e.g. their education history, family background, attitudes and behaviour), and differences in the student population across grades and classrooms within schools, that account for most of the overall variation in creative thinking performance. Similar proportions of within-school and between-school variation are observed across all countries and economies, with slightly more (28%) of the variation in creative thinking attributable to between-school differences.

In most countries and economies, the between-school variation in creative thinking performance accounts for less than one-third of the overall within-country variation in performance (Figure III.3.2). However, this share of between-school variation differs substantially across some countries and economies. In general, high-performing systems tend to have relatively less variation in performance between schools than other systems – in fact, in 10 of the 12 highest-performing countries in creative thinking, less than 20% of the variation in student performance is attributed to between-school differences. In Denmark*, Iceland, Latvia*, Spain and Estonia (in order of increasing share), between-school differences account for less than 10% of the total within-country variation in performance. In contrast, in the United Arab Emirates, Jamaica*, the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, Israel, the Netherlands* and Romania (in order of decreasing share), between-school differences account for over 50% of the total variation in the country’s performance. In most of these latter countries, between-school differences also account for over 50% of the total variation in students’ mathematics performance.

On average across OECD countries, around three-quarters of the variation in creative thinking scores was due to differences in student performance within the same schools. Which student characteristics are associated with greater performance in creative thinking? Are these characteristics as strongly associated with performance in creative thinking as they are with performance in the core PISA domains? The following sections examine how gender, socio-economic status and immigrant background relate to differences in creative thinking performance.

There is a clear and significant association between gender and creative thinking performance. In no participating country/economy did boys outperform girls in creative thinking (Figure III.3.4). In all but three countries and economies – Chile, Mexico and Peru – the difference in average performance between boys and girls was statistically significant in favour of girls. On average across OECD countries, girls had a large performance advantage, scoring nearly 3 points higher than boys. In Jordan, Finland, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica*, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar (in descending order), girls scored at least 5 points higher than boys – around half the OECD average standard deviation in performance in creative thinking.

In most high-performing countries, the gender gap in creative thinking performance is similar to that of the OECD average (3 points). However, in Finland, boys scored 6 points less than girls on average – lower than girls on average across the OECD, as well as boys in most other high-performing countries – in turn dragging down the overall performance score in the country.

In addition to being lower performers, on average, the overall variation in performance in creative thinking among boys is larger than among girls (Table III.B1.3.2) and boys were also less likely to be high achievers (i.e. score within the 75^th percentile) within their country/economy (Figure III.3.5). On average across the OECD, 29% of girls were high achievers compared to 21% of boys. In Finland, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, the difference in the proportion of girls who are high achievers compared to boys more than doubled with respect to the OECD average, rising to a difference of over 15 percentage points. In other words, while around one in three girls in these countries and economies performed within the 75^th percentile, only around one in six boys performed similarly. In Jordan, girls were more likely to be high achievers than boys by almost 19 percentage points. In nearly all countries and economies, gender differences in favour of girls among high achievers in creative thinking are statistically significant.

Some clear regional patterns emerge when considering both the overall association between gender and creative thinking, and the share of boys and girls who are high achievers in creative thinking across countries and economies. In several countries in Latin America, there are no significant differences between boys and girls in performance overall (Chile, Mexico and Peru) and with respect to the percentage of high achievers (Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay). In Brazil, Colombia and Panama*, gender differences in overall performance are also relatively small compared to other countries. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Middle Eastern countries are overrepresented amongst countries with the largest gender gaps in mean performance (the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority) and amongst high achievers (Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority).

Significant gender gaps are also observed in most countries and economies amongst top performers (i.e. students performing at Proficiency Levels 5 or 6 in creative thinking) (Figure III.3.6).1 Overall, the proportion of top-performing girls was 1.3 times larger than the proportion of top-performing boys across OECD countries and economies (Figure III.3.7 and Table III.B1.3.4). Differences are even starker amongst students internationally at the lower end of the performance scale: the proportion of boys who performed at or below Proficiency Level 2 is 1.4 times larger than that of girls.

The higher performance of girls, on average, is not a unique finding to creative thinking. Gender differences in mean performance in the PISA core domains across those countries also participating in the creative thinking assessment varied substantially, and in both directions: from close to 24% of a standard deviation across OECD countries in favour of girls in reading, to around 10% of a standard deviation across OECD countries in favour of boys in mathematics.2 Girls’ performance advantage in creative thinking – around 25% of a standard deviation across OECD countries – is similar to the one observed in reading across OECD countries (Figure III.3.8).

While gender differences in both creative thinking and reading are similar across most countries and economies, there are some exceptions to this general pattern. In Albania**, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, the Palestinian Authority, Baku (Azerbaijan) and the Dominican Republic** (in descending order), the gender effect size in favour of girls is over 10% of a standard deviation less for creative thinking than it is for reading. In other words, in these countries/economies, girls outperformed boys by over 10% of a standard deviation in performance more in reading than in creative thinking. In Hong Kong (China)* and Macao (China), the opposite is true: girls’ performance advantage in creative thinking is significantly greater than it is for reading (by over 10% of a standard deviation performance).

It is not obvious whether a gender gap in creative thinking should be expected (Box III.3.2). The creative thinking assessment requires students to read and understand the item prompt and, in most cases, provide a written answer – like all PISA tests, this demands some level of reading comprehension and writing proficiency. However, the creative thinking test differs significantly from the PISA reading test in that students must use their imagination to come up with new ideas rather than find answers in the item stimulus using reasoning processes; they must use evaluative processes to filter their ideas and choose the best one(s) to respond to the task criteria; and they must articulate their ideas in an open response format rather than selecting pre-defined responses from a multiple-choice list. The creative thinking test also situates items in multiple domain contexts, potentially mitigating differences in performance by gender arising from domain-specific knowledge, skills and preferences.

After accounting for students’ performance in the PISA core domains, girls still outperformed boys in creative thinking (Table III.B1.3.6).3 In all countries and economies, girls performed relatively better than boys after accounting for mathematics performance (Figure III.3.9). This relative performance gap can be large: in well over half of all participating countries/economies, girls scored at least 3 points higher in creative thinking, on average, than boys with the same mathematics scores, and in Saudi Arabia, Finland, Iceland and Macao (China) (in descending order), girls scored at least 5 points higher than boys in creative thinking after accounting for mathematics performance. Even after accounting for reading performance – and despite similar gender differences observed in reading performance in general – girls’ performance advantage in creative thinking remains statistically significant in around half of all countries/economies. On average across the OECD, girls scored 1 point higher in creative thinking than boys with similar reading scores. In Macao (China), Saudi Arabia, Finland, Jamaica*, Hong Kong (China)* and Jordan (in descending order), girls scored over 2 points higher than boys in creative thinking after accounting for reading performance.

Fairness in education means that all students, irrespective of their background, are given the opportunity to realise their full learning potential.4 Students’ socio-economic status relates positively to performance in creative thinking, as it does to performance in all other PISA assessment domains (Table III.B1.3.7). Across OECD countries, the difference in performance between students in the top quarter of the PISA index of socio-economic and cultural status (ESCS) – or advantaged students – and students in the bottom quarter of the index – disadvantaged students – is large at 9.5 score points (close to the OECD average standard deviation in performance) (Table III.B1.3.7). In Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Hungary, Israel, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Peru, the difference in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students is well over 12 score points.

Reducing socio-economic differences in performance would serve to improve the overall performance of students in countries. For example, consider the performance of students in the two neighbouring countries of Czechia and the Slovak Republic. Advantaged students in both countries scored relatively similarly on average (38 points and 36 points, respectively), yet differences in the performance of disadvantaged students are much larger: in Czechia, disadvantaged students scored 27 points on average in creative thinking, while disadvantaged students in the Slovak Republic scored over 5 points lower on average. As a result, overall performance in the country is significantly lower in the Slovak Republic (a difference of -4 points).

The strength of the association between socio-economic status and performance, however, is weaker in creative thinking than it is in mathematics, reading and science respectively, on average across the OECD (Figure III.3.10 and Table III.B1.3.8).5 In some countries, like Croatia, Jamaica*, Mongolia and Korea, this relationship between socio-economic status and performance is significantly weaker in creative thinking, although in around one-third of countries and economies this association is at least as strong for creative thinking as it is for both mathematics and reading.

In general, the association between socio-economic status and performance in creative thinking is likely due to the poorer performance, overall, observed among disadvantaged students in PISA. Indeed, after accounting for students’ mathematics and reading performance, differences in the performance of advantaged and disadvantaged students are much smaller in all countries/economies – and even become statistically non-significant in 14 countries/economies (Table III.B1.3.7). Socio-economic disparities in creative thinking performance therefore rather reflect a range of economic and cultural factors, experiences and mechanisms known to affect student achievement overall. For example, socio-economic segregation across neighbourhoods can result in unequal access to quality teaching, school environments conducive to learning, and adequate school materials among students within the same country. Other disadvantages relate to students’ family circumstances – students whose parents have higher levels of education, and more prestigious and better-paid jobs, benefit from a wider range of financial (e.g. private tutoring, computers, books), cultural (e.g. extended vocabulary, time management skills) and social (e.g. role models, networks) resources. Students from advantaged families are also more likely to have better access to quality early childhood education and care. These factors make it easier for students from advantaged backgrounds to succeed in school compared to students from families with lower levels of education or that are affected by chronic unemployment, low-paid jobs or poverty.

In some countries and economies, the performance of disadvantaged students compared to advantaged students remains large even after accounting for performance in mathematics and reading. In Bulgaria, disadvantaged students scored nearly 4 points lower than advantaged students with similar mathematics and reading performance (i.e. after accounting), and in New Zealand* and Peru, this gap was over 4.5 score points.

Academically resilient students are defined in PISA as students who are in the bottom quarter of the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) in their own country/economy (i.e. disadvantaged students) and who scored in the top quarter in that country/economy (i.e. high achievers). These students are academically resilient because, despite their socio-economic disadvantage, they have attained educational excellence in comparison with students in their own country. The share of academically resilient students in creative thinking varies across countries and economies, from as much as 20% of disadvantaged students in Uzbekistan to below 8% of disadvantaged students in Romania, Bulgaria and Peru (Figure III.3.11). In these latter countries, few disadvantaged students are high achievers in creative thinking.

Amongst the highest-performing systems overall, Korea (16.7%), Canada* (16.1%), Estonia (15.0%) and Latvia* (14.6%) have the largest share of resilient students in creative thinking, and Singapore (9.9%) and New Zealand* (9.0%) have the smallest shares. In New Zealand*, this low share of resilient students is combined with a relatively large gap in the performance of advantaged and disadvantaged students (11.7 score points compared to 9.5 score points in Singapore).

A fair education system also gives students with an immigrant background an equal opportunity to thrive at school and realise their full learning potential. In many countries and economies, children of immigrant parents are more at risk of low performance in education compared to the children of parents who were born in the country.6 In general, this pattern is also observed in creative thinking – on average across the OECD, students with an immigrant background scored over 4 points lower than students without an immigrant background.

Education systems around the world vary greatly in terms of how large their immigrant student population is, and performance differences between students with an immigrant and non-immigrant background across systems should be interpreted with this in mind. Amongst systems where over 5% of the student population has an immigrant background, these students have a particularly large performance disadvantage in Finland – having scored over 8 points lower than their non-immigrant peers in creative thinking, on average (Table III.B1.3.9). The opposite is true in a handful of countries, with immigrant students having scored, on average, around 4.5 points higher in creative thinking in Saudi Arabia, over 7 points higher in Brunei Darussalam, and over 10 points higher in both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, over 50% of the student population has an immigrant background (Table III.B1.3.9).

The large gap in performance in favour of non-immigrant students can be explained, to a large extent, by the socio-economic and linguistic barriers that immigrant students face in many countries. Once students’ socio-economic status and language spoken at home are accounted for, the gap in performance narrows significantly (Figure III.3.12). In Belgium, Czechia, Denmark*, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands*, Slovenia, Spain and Thailand, large differences in performance (i.e. over 3 points) between immigrant and non-immigrant students more than halve or become insignificant after accounting for these factors. In Australia*, Canada*, Israel and New Zealand*, the net association (i.e. after accounting) between immigrant background and performance in creative thinking even becomes significantly positive. However, in Brazil, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Finland, Jamaica*, Mexico, Morocco, North Macedonia, the Palestinian Authority, the Philippines, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Chinese Taipei, the performance disadvantage of students with an immigrant background nonetheless remains large even after controlling for these factors, and in Chile, Denmark*, Estonia, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands* and Portugal, the net disadvantage (i.e. after accounting for these factors) of immigrant students remains moderate (between 1.5 and 3 score points less than non-immigrant students).

The performance of immigrant students can also be examined in comparison to non-immigrant students with similar mathematics and reading scores. An analysis accounting for mathematics performance shows that, on average across OECD countries, immigrant students scored nearly 2 points less in creative thinking than non-immigrant students; similarly, immigrant students scored over 1 point less than non-immigrant students, on average across the OECD, after accounting for reading performance (Figure III.3.13). In some cases, this performance gap related to immigrant background is larger when comparing students with similar performance in the PISA core domains: for example, in Slovenia – where around 10% of the student population has an immigrant background – immigrant students scored around 3 points less than their non-immigrant peers with similar reading scores. Only in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar did students with an immigrant background score significantly higher in creative thinking than non-immigrant students, after accounting for mathematics and reading performance respectively.

While student characteristics like gender, socio-economic background and immigrant background may be associated with differences in performance in creative thinking within schools, a non-negligeable proportion of the total variation in creative thinking performance is attributed to between-school differences (26%, OECD average). At the school level, certain characteristics may reflect different opportunities for different groups of students to access quality teaching and school facilities. Analysing student performance with respect to different school characteristics can provide insights about the extent to which school-level factors might be associated with creative thinking performance or present barriers for diverse students to access quality teaching within countries. Table III.3.1 summarises the relationship between student performance in creative thinking and school ESCS index (socio-economically advantaged/disadvantaged schools), school location (urban or rural), school type (public or private), and educational track (general study programmes or vocational and pre-vocational programmes).

In all countries and economies, students in socio-economically advantaged schools have a large performance advantage compared to students from disadvantaged schools (Table III.3.1).7 In over half of all participating countries and economies, the strength of this relationship is roughly equal to or greater than the OECD average standard deviation in performance. In Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Slovak Republic, Jamaica*, North Macedonia and Israel (in descending order), the strength of this relationship is over 1.5 times the OECD average standard deviation in performance – or equivalent to a vast performance advantage of between 16 and 19 score points for students in advantaged schools. Amongst OECD countries, in order of increasing size, Iceland, Denmark*, Finland, Estonia, Spain, Canada* and Latvia*, record the smallest differences in performance between students in advantaged and disadvantaged schools (between 4.5 and 7 score points in favour of students in advantaged schools) (Table III.B1.3.15).

While students attending an advantaged school scored better in creative thinking on average, this association is smaller than the equivalent association with student performance in the PISA curricular domains. Only in Iceland, Macao (China), North Macedonia and Peru does school advantage have a bigger association with performance in creative thinking than it does with performance in all other PISA curricular domains (Table III.B1.3.16).

As might be expected given the association observed between performance and school advantage, students attending private school performed better in the creative thinking assessment than those attending public schools in most countries/economies (Table III.3.1). However, the strength of this association differs between high-performing and low-performing countries/economies. In under two-thirds of all countries that perform at or above the OECD average and with available data, students in private schools outperformed their peers in public schools – but differences in performance are often small to moderate, except in Lithuania (over 6 points), New Zealand* (5 points), and Australia* and Finland (both 3 points); and in Chinese Taipei, students who attend private schools even performed significantly worse than those who attend public schools (scoring over 4 points less). In the remaining countries and economies with available data that performed below the OECD average in creative thinking, school type has a more significant association with performance: in over two-thirds of these countries/economies, private school students outperformed their peers in public schools; and in most countries/economies where this was the case, the difference in performance is equal to or greater than half of the OECD average standard deviation in performance.

Are these differences in the performance of students in private and public schools a reflection of differences in school quality and educational offering? Or are they rather a reflection of the associations between performance in creative thinking and certain student characteristics, such as student and school socio-economic profile, that likely differ between these two student populations? After accounting for students’ gender, socio-economic status and school socio-economic profile, the relationship between school type and creative thinking performance becomes non-significant in around half of all countries and economies (Table III.B1.3.17). In fact, in 16 countries/economies, the net association (i.e. after accounting for student and school characteristics) with creative thinking performance is actually significantly negative for students who attend private schools. Only in Albania**, Brunei Darussalam, El Salvador, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, the Philippines, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is there still a significant and positive net association between attending a private school and creative thinking performance, after accounting for student and school characteristics. In the United Arab Emirates in particular, students at private schools scored nearly 11 points higher in creative thinking than those who attend public schools, after accounting for these factors.

Does the type of educational track or study programme in which a student is enrolled also influence their creative thinking competencies? In most education systems, there is a major distinction in curricula between general study programmes and vocational or pre-vocational study programmes. On average across the OECD, students in general study programmes performed stronger in the creative thinking assessment than those enrolled in pre-vocational or vocational study programmes (Table III.3.1). This was the case in Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Spain and Greece (in descending order of magnitude), where the performance advantage of students in general education programmes equalled or exceeded 10 score points (around the OECD standard deviation in performance). Even in Germany – a country with a traditionally strong vocational education and training system – students in general education programmes still scored significantly better, on average, in creative thinking (around 7 score points higher) than students in vocational or pre-vocational study programmes. Amongst European countries with available data, only Czechia, the Netherlands*, Latvia* and Moldova recorded no significant differences in the creative thinking performance of students in different study programmes.

In a few Latin American countries with available data, students in pre-vocational or vocational study programmes performed better on average than their peers in general education study programmes. In Costa Rica, the performance advantage of students in pre-vocational and vocational education is around 3 points, and in the Dominican Republic** and Brazil, this difference is around 5 score points respectively. Similar results are observed in other countries from the region that have only a few students in the PISA sample enrolled in vocational programmes (e.g. Chile, El Salvador and Panama*, Table III.B1.3.14). In Uruguay however, students in general study programmes scored around 3 points higher, on average, on the creative thinking test than students in vocational or pre-vocational programmes.

In general, across the OECD, the performance advantage associated with being enrolled in general study programmes is weaker for creative thinking than it is for mathematics, reading and science (Table III.B1.3.16). In other words, although students in general study programmes scored higher in creative thinking than students in vocational programmes, they have an even bigger advantage in mathematics, reading and science. This may be because vocational programmes emphasise creative thinking processes and practical engagement in creative work more than general study programmes do (e.g. troubleshooting faulty machinery or technology, or engaging in craft, design and/or engineering work); or, it may be because of a relatively weaker focus on developing knowledge and skills in more traditionally “academic” subject areas in vocational programmes (or indeed, a combination of both).

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