Finland’s students rank among world’s best in creativity

Finnish 15-year-olds have demonstrated excellent creative thinking abilities in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 Creative Thinking study.

The findings, published in June 2024, rank Finland among the top-performing OECD nations, with girls turning in a particularly strong performance. The assessment evaluated students' capacity to generate solutions for everyday problems by assessing their capability to produce diverse and creative ideas, and evaluate and improve them.  

In Finland, 39 per cent of 15-year-olds reached proficiency levels 5 or 6, the highest levels in the assessment, compared with the OECD average of 27 per cent. Finland outperformed most countries, ranking just behind Singapore, Korea, Canada and Australia, while being on par with New Zealand, Estonia, Denmark and Latvia. In total, 64 countries and economies participated in the study.

Finnish youth performed particularly well in collaborative solving of social problems, which is listed as one of the objectives in the national core curriculum's principles for developing the school culture.

Minister of Education Anna-Maja Henriksson expressed her delight at the results and highlighted the importance of creativity and innovation for Finland's future success. “The results of the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking assessment show that this is an area where Finnish schools have excelled in their mission to shape our future,” she stated.

Girls take the lead

The PISA assessment discovered a noteworthy gender gap, with girls outperforming boys in all participating countries. The gap in Finland was the widest in favour of girls. Nearly half of girls in Finland achieved top performance levels in creative thinking, especially in social problem-solving. Boys performed fairly well on average, but their scores were closer to the OECD average.

The study also revealed minimal variation in creative thinking skills between different Finnish schools, aligning with previous PISA results showing small performance disparities based on socio-economic status. Urban schools slightly outperformed rural ones, but the differences remained minor.