The outcome is perhaps not surprising, given the city’s notorious rote learning and exam-oriented education culture. It rose two spots to seventh place in science, and maintained fourth place in maths. But the reading scores slipped one rank to 11th, the worst performance since the assessment was introduced in 2000. The good news is that the city outranked others in terms of education equity, meaning family background and socio-economic status have “minimal bearing” on student performance. But the inadequacies in creative thinking does raise questions whether the city could nurture talent for a knowledge- and innovation-based economy in future.

We hope the government will not settle for less when it says the findings showed students’ performance in creative thinking was on par with the international average. While the city can pride itself on providing all students with equal education opportunities, there is certainly much room for improvement. It is good that officials will draw reference from the findings to further nurture students’ creative thinking and other generic skills, and build a solid foundation for their whole-person development and lifelong learning. At stake is not just ensuring the younger generation in the world is equipped for survival, but also the competitiveness of a creative Hong Kong.