Research and archive

Creative thinking: statistics

Sir Ken Robinson, former chair of the NACCCE Commission, now senior education advisor to the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles discovered the following key research;

  • Of 1,600 children aged 3 to 5 yrs who were tested to see if they thought in a divergent way, 98% showed they could think in a creative divergent way
  • By the time they were aged 8 to 10 yrs, 32% could think this way.
  • When the same test was applied to 13 to 15 yrs, only 10% could think in this way.
  • And when the test was used with 200,000 25 year olds, only 2% could think creatively.
  • Education is driven by the idea of one answer and this idea of divergent thinking becomes stifled.
  • Creativity is the 'genetic code' of education and it is essential for the new economic circumstances of the 21st century.

‘Provision of creative and cultural education in early years should be further developed, in particular through provision for the arts.'