The Philippines ranked second lowest in the new Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test on creative thinking skills out of 64 economies surveyed. 

Based on the results posted Tuesday, 15-year-old students from the Philippines who participated in the test scored 14 points on average, far below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 33. 

Tied to Uzbekistan which scored the same points, the Philippines was behind the lowest ranked Albania which scored 13. 

Among all six ASEAN countries surveyed, the Philippines scored lowest, trailing behind Indonesia with 19 points, Thailand with 21, Brunei Darussalam with 24, Malaysia with 25 and Singapore with 41. 

Singapore’s score earned the country the top spot in the list, followed by Korea and Canada which tied at 38 points. Australia came in third scoring 37 and New Zealand, fourth with 36 points.

The report also noted a huge performance gap in creative thinking between the highest-performing and lowest-performing country, averaging around 28 score points.

For example, in the Philippines, only 3.4% of students achieved Level 5 proficiency – the second to the highest proficiency level with scores from 41 to 47  — while 30% of Singaporean students achieved this, totaling a 26.6 percentage point difference. 

The test was the first of its kind to be launched by PISA to test how well these students can use their imagination and creativity to generate and improve upon ideas.

The assessment includes four domains: written expression, visual expression, social problem solving and scientific problem solving. In each domain, students engage with open tasks that have no single correct response, such as providing multiple, distinct responses or to generate a response that is not conventional. These responses could be a solution to a problem, a creative text or a visual artifact.