The lastest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) ranking, showed that the UK is fairly average in its scores (although ranked 11th in Science) throughout the 34 participating countries and has been stagnant for the past few years. This animation gives an interesting overview of the assessment process behind the PISA rankings are made and it is important to understand the impact that these have on how government's shape educational policy. PISA looks at the correlation between what is learnt at school and then applied in contexts outside of school. The following statement is made in the PISA 2009 Assessment Framework:
PISA 2009 covers the domains of reading, mathematics and science not merely in terms ofwhether students can reproduce specific subject matter knowledge, but also whether they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge in novel situations
There is no mention of creativity, possibly because it is difficult to quantify and compare easily, but I can't help thinking that it needs to be more explicit in the types of intelligences it aims to measure, especially since it is focused on very traditional academic concepts of intelligence with respects to reading, maths and science. It would be interesting to know how they might measure according to Gardner's Multiple Intelligences:
