The Critical Role of Creativity in Academic Achievement
Creativity is often regarded as a supplementary skill in education—something schools can focus on only after mastering literacy and numeracy. However, a 2025 study published in Thinking Skills and Creativity challenges this long-held hierarchy by demonstrating that creativity contributes meaningful, distinct information about academic performance beyond traditional predictors like grade point average (GPA) and personality traits.
In an analysis of Australian secondary students, creativity-related measures accounted for an additional 7.5% of the variance in national literacy scores and 9.2% in numeracy scores after considering GPA and personality. These findings suggest that creative thinking captures aspects of student ability that conventional academic indicators may overlook.
Study Design: Tracking Students Over Time
The research was part of a broader project initiated around 2016 involving 1,053 students aged 15 to 18 at a single Australian school. Data were collected across six different points over roughly two years. Participants completed personality questionnaires, creativity self-assessments, and performance tasks, while the school provided GPA records and historical results from the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).
NAPLAN, a nationwide test administered in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9, assesses skills in reading, writing, language conventions, and numeracy. Though widely used, it is important to note that NAPLAN scores reflect only one component of school assessment and do not capture a student’s overall ability or school quality.
Due to the need for complete data across all measures, the sample size for final regression analyses was reduced to 216 students for literacy and 212 for numeracy. These figures are key when interpreting the reported contributions of creativity to academic outcomes.
Creativity as a Multifaceted Construct
Rather than a single score, creativity was assessed through various lenses. Students rated their creativity across domains such as scholarly, scientific, and artistic work and reported on intellectual risk-taking—their willingness to explore uncertain ideas or risk mistakes. They also completed verbal and mathematical tasks scored externally for originality.
One notable measure was a divergent-thinking exercise focusing on flexibility—the ability to generate ideas across diverse categories. For example, suggesting consequences related to transport, family life, and the environment indicates greater flexibility than offering multiple ideas within a single category.
This multidimensional approach is crucial because creativity is not a singular trait but a composite of generating diverse ideas, producing original concepts, and evaluating or improving these ideas, as reflected in the OECD’s creative-thinking framework.
Flexibility Enhances Literacy
For literacy, the researchers built regression models in stages. GPA alone explained 19.3% of the variance in NAPLAN literacy scores. Adding personality traits—especially openness—increased this to 23.1%. Incorporating creativity-related measures further raised the explained variance to 30.6%, with the 7.5 percentage-point increase attributable primarily to divergent-thinking flexibility.
Interestingly, not all creativity measures contributed equally. The flexibility component stood out as the significant predictor, while verbal creativity tasks and broad self-reports did not add substantial predictive power. This nuance is important: the reported 7.5% increase refers to the combined creativity variables, especially flexibility, rather than a single creativity score.
The association between flexibility and literacy suggests that the ability to shift among categories of ideas may aid reading, writing, and language tasks that demand multiple perspectives. However, the study did not directly test this mechanism and only established a correlation with earlier NAPLAN performance.
Creativity’s Unique Influence on Numeracy
Numeracy outcomes revealed a different pattern. GPA accounted for 17.7% of score variation, personality traits raised this to 20.6%, and creativity-related variables brought the total to 29.8%. Here, domain-specific creativity—mathematical and scientific creativity—predicted stronger numeracy scores, while divergent-thinking flexibility did not contribute significantly.
Another intriguing finding was that intellectual risk-taking predicted lower numeracy scores after adjusting for other factors. This counterintuitive result may reflect the nature of numeracy tests, where precise answers are favored over exploratory or adventurous approaches. The researchers also noted overlap between intellectual risk-taking and openness as a possible explanation, though further research is needed.
Breaking down the creativity contribution: self-reports accounted for 6.2 percentage points, mathematical creativity added 3 points, and divergent-thinking flexibility essentially none. This highlights the importance of recognizing both positive and negative influences within creativity measures.
These results align with a 2023 analysis of Australian university admission rankings from the same project, which found that creativity measures explained additional variation in ATAR scores beyond GPA and personality, extending the conceptual framework to lower-stakes assessments like NAPLAN.
Broader Evidence Supports Creativity’s Academic Value
The 2025 study fits within a growing body of research highlighting creativity’s role in academic success. A meta-analysis found modest positive correlations between creativity and school grades (r = 0.19) and stronger associations with standardized test scores (r = 0.28). These figures underscore creativity as a relevant factor in educational outcomes.
International assessments have begun to incorporate creativity alongside traditional subjects. In 2022, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluated creative thinking among 15-year-olds for the first time. The OECD reported that countries excelling in creative thinking often performed strongly in mathematics, reading, and science as well. Australia ranked among these high performers, challenging the notion that creativity and academic competence are opposing forces.
Academic success is inherently complex, influenced by factors such as ability, persistence, motivation, and personality. Previous research on grit and SAT scores affirms that traits beyond raw ability matter. This study adds to that understanding by demonstrating that creative performance contributes distinct and valuable information about academic achievement.
Limitations and Practical Implications
It is important to recognize the study’s limitations. As an observational design without random assignment, it cannot establish causality between creativity and improved NAPLAN scores. Reverse causation is possible—strong academic skills might enhance creative task performance. Additionally, unmeasured variables such as teaching quality or socioeconomic background could influence both creativity and academic outcomes.
The sample was drawn from a single Australian school, and attrition reduced the dataset to just over 200 students for complete analyses. The predictors were partly selected based on earlier analyses of the same data, underscoring the need for replication across different age groups, schools, and cultural contexts.
Nonetheless, the study offers valuable insights. In this cohort, cognitive flexibility specifically informed literacy achievement, while mathematical and scientific creativity related to numeracy success. Creativity was not merely an afterthought but an integral element of the academic profile, with its influence varying by subject and measurement method.
For educators and policymakers, these findings highlight the importance of fostering creativity as part of a holistic educational approach. Creativity should not be sidelined as a “pleasant extra” but acknowledged as a meaningful contributor to literacy and numeracy development.
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