Spanish PISA 2022 reports - creative thinking
With an average of 32.8 points, Spanish students are around the OECD average (32.7 points) and above neighbouring countries such as Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy.
The test explored students' competence in three cognitive processes: diverse idea generation, creative idea generation, and idea evaluation and improvement. Spanish students scored relatively higher on tasks that required them to evaluate and improve ideas than on other tasks.
According to PISA, 80% of Spanish students reached at least the basic achievement level (level 3 or higher). A total of 25% achieved high performance in creative thinking (levels 5 and 6). Of the group who excelled in the test, only 15% are also top performers in mathematics, and 14% are top performers in reading, suggesting that it is possible to excel in creative thinking without excelling in academics, and vice versa.
In terms of socio-economic status, advantaged students perform better in creative thinking than their socio-economically disadvantaged peers, with significant differences in all cases. Spain, with 7.9 points of difference in favour of advantaged pupils, is below the OECD average (9.5) and the EU total (10.2), showing a higher level of equity.
This equity is also reflected in the case of migrant pupils, whose results are less different from those of native pupils in Spain than in the OECD and the EU as a whole.
The differences in the performance of boys and girls are in all cases in favour of the latter. In Spain, the difference of 2.2 points is lower than the OECD average (2.7) and the EU average (2.6).
In addition to assessing performance in creative thinking, students also answered questions about how they perceive creativity. In Spain, 86% of students agree or strongly agree that it is possible to be creative in almost any subject, and 83% agree or strongly agree that doing something creative gives them satisfaction.
Non official translation