The "Creative Thinking: can students think outside the box?" study assessed students' ability to generate, evaluate, and refine ideas that can lead to original and effective solutions.

Tiina Kraav, a lecturer in mathematics education at the University of Tartu, said that based on Estonia's success in PISA's main tests, it was already possible to assume children would do well in the creative thinking study.

"Broadly speaking, basic knowledge and subject-related knowledge are important. Innovative ideas, innovation and creativity are always based on some kind of factual knowledge. Without basic knowledge, creative ideas can be put forward, but they may not be applied because they have no scientific basis in fact," she told the show "Uudis+".

In total, 6,392 students from Estonia in grades 8 and 9 participated in the study. The average score was 35.9 points, higher than the OECD average of 32.7 points. 89 percent of Estonian students achieved at least the basic level (OECD average: 78 percent), and 34 percent reached the top performer level (OECD average: 27 percent). Our students performed best in written and visual expression, as well as scientific problem-solving, with slightly lower results in social problem-solving.

Kraav noted that evaluating creativity is difficult, but possible. "Generating different ideas is easy. When asked to come up with 2-3 ideas, the ideas had to be qualitatively placed in different categories. When it comes to original ideas tasks, it is more difficult," said Kraav.

Fortunately, it was already known from previous tests which ideas 15-year-olds were most likely to come up with and which were more common, and which were less common.

Estonian students scored higher marks in written and visual self-expression. For example, in tasks where they had to title abstract illustrations or design posters for events. They scored fifth place in the written self-expression.

They also took third place, behind Singapore and Korea, for solving scientific problems. The test asked students to offer explanations for a decrease in frogs in part of a river that runs through a city. "Here, one can guess that our strong science base and good results in maths and science play a role," Kraav said.

The results were not so good when it came to solving social problems. These tasks focused on both individuals' personal and interpersonal problems, and broader challenges of school, community, and global.

In general, the test scores were fairly consistent across Estonia, with a minimal impact from socioeconomic background. In Estonia, this indicator was 6.9 percent, compared to the OECD average of 11.6 percent. Girls scored 3.4 points higher than boys.

"This is something we can really rejoice about. In September, we had to admit that the socio-economic background of pupils was already starting to influence the outcome," Kraav said.

Solving the test also helped measure how much time Estonian students spent on solving each task. "In terms of persistence, Estonia's scale was very good," Kraav said, adding she is delighted that students took the effort to solve these tests since not every person receives a personal result.

Despite gaining good results, Kraav said there is room for improvement, especially in terms of teacher training. "Teachers can intuitively develop people's creativity very well, but very little attention is paid to specific activities and its conscious development in teacher training. [...] This is something we should be doing more about," Kraav told "Uudis+".

196 schools participated in the Estonian PISA Creative Thinking Test.

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an international educational study that assesses the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students. The study is organized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

So far, there have been eight PISA studies, and Estonia has participated since 2006. The Creative Thinking study was conducted as part of the main PISA 2022 test in the spring of 2022.

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