When the Philippines' PISA 2022 results made headlines, most of the coverage focused on the country's 77th-place ranking in reading and mathematics. Those numbers are serious — and we have written about them at length. But there is a data point from PISA 2022 that received far less attention, and it may be the most consequential finding of all.
The Philippines ranked in the bottom 4 globally for creative thinking.
In a world being rapidly transformed by artificial intelligence, this is not a footnote. It is the central education challenge of the next decade.
What is the PISA Creative Thinking Assessment?
PISA 2022 was the first time the assessment included a dedicated creative thinking component. It tested students on their ability to generate diverse and original ideas, evaluate and improve on existing solutions, and approach problems from multiple perspectives — in written, visual, and social contexts.
Creative thinking in the PISA framework is not about artistic ability. It is about the capacity to think beyond obvious answers, question assumptions, and produce novel solutions. It is, in other words, the cognitive skill that most directly distinguishes human contribution from what AI systems can replicate.
Why Creative Thinking Is the Most Important Skill Right Now
The World Economic Forum and McKinsey Global Institute have both published research documenting which job skills are most resistant to automation. The answer is consistent: creative thinking, complex reasoning, emotional intelligence, and nuanced communication are the skills that AI systems cannot replicate.
Routine cognitive tasks — data entry, basic customer service, standard document processing, rule-based analysis — are being automated rapidly. The BPO sector in the Philippines, which employs over 1.5 million people and generates $38 billion in revenue, built its competitive advantage on exactly these routine cognitive tasks.
The next generation of Filipino workers will need to offer something more. The PISA data says the current education system is not building it.
Why Does the Philippines Rank So Low?
Creative thinking is not a natural talent distributed unequally across populations. It is a learnable skill that is developed — or suppressed — by educational environments. Countries that rank highly in creative thinking tend to share common pedagogical features:
- Classrooms that reward questioning and debate, not just correct answers
- Project-based and inquiry-based learning alongside direct instruction
- Assessment systems that evaluate reasoning process, not just outcomes
- Teachers who model creative thinking in their own practice
- Curricula that allow time for exploration and deep engagement with ideas
Philippine education, by contrast, has historically been organised around examination preparation, correct answer recall, and deference to authority. These are not cultural failings — they are the predictable outputs of a system designed around standardised tests and large class sizes, where encouraging open-ended inquiry is practically very difficult.
The Link to Civic Engagement
Creative thinking and critical analysis are also the foundations of meaningful civic participation. Citizens who can evaluate evidence, question claims, and reason about complex social problems are better equipped to participate in democracy, resist misinformation, and engage constructively with their communities.
This connection between education and civic life is central to Malaya Initiative Foundation's mission. We believe that building critical thinking skills is not just an economic investment — it is an investment in the quality of Philippine democracy and society.
What the Evidence Says Works
The good news is that creative thinking can be taught, and we have good evidence about how. The most effective approaches include:
Socratic dialogue and structured debate
Teaching students to construct and challenge arguments — through structured classroom debate, Socratic questioning, and collaborative problem-solving — has been shown to significantly improve critical and creative thinking across all subject areas.
Project-based learning
Assigning complex, open-ended projects that require students to define problems, gather evidence, and propose original solutions develops exactly the cognitive muscles that PISA is measuring.
Metacognitive instruction
Teaching students how to think about their own thinking — to monitor their reasoning, identify their assumptions, and evaluate their conclusions — is one of the highest-impact educational interventions documented in the research literature.
"The Philippines is not short of creative people. Walk through any Filipino community and you will find extraordinary resourcefulness, artistic expression, and innovative thinking. The gap is not in the people — it is in a system that has not been designed to develop and recognise those capacities."
Where Malaya Initiative Foundation Focuses
Critical thinking and creative problem-solving are at the heart of Malaya Initiative Foundation's program focus. We are specifically building toward educational programs and teacher training approaches that develop the higher-order thinking skills where the Philippines ranks lowest and where the existing landscape of education nonprofits and government programs has the least presence.
Our two-year discovery phase is gathering the evidence about what works in the Philippine context — because the approaches that have succeeded in Singapore or Finland need to be adapted, not imported wholesale.
Sources: PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment — OECD; World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2023; McKinsey Global Institute — The Future of Work in the Age of AI; EDCOM II Report, January 2026.