One of India’s First Reports on Creativity & the Education system highlights that Creative Thinking among students is not enough, according to a multi-stakeholder survey comprising corporate, educators, students and parents.
Sylvant Advisors and GyanLab have launched a report on “Creativity & the Indian Education System” with an objective to understand the current level of focus on Creative Thinking in school education and the need for it in students’ lives as they prepare to join the workforce over the next decade. This report is based on an extensive survey of 1000 individuals, including corporates, educators, parents and school students – (classes 5–10) across 10 Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities in India
According to Ernst & Young Report on Role of Private Sector on K-12 Education in India, there are currently 25.3 crore school going children in India which is the highest in the world. A recent article as part of Future of Jobs report by W orld Economic Forum said that 65% of children currently entering primary school will have jobs that do not yet exist. The same report also states that Creativity will be one of the top three skills workers will need by 2020. This shows that creative thinking will play an extremely critical role in the lives of present day students as they grow up to join the work force 5 – 10 years from now.
With this survey, we set out to understand:
- What do Indian Corporates think about Creativity as a critical skill in their workplace – now & in the next 5 years?
- How do parents think about creativity? Are they laying enough emphasis on this to their children?
- How effective are educators/schools in fostering creativity – within their school systems?
- How do students see themselves being creative in the classrooms?
Key Findings:
- 100% of corporates surveyed said that Creative Thinking will be an important skill they will seek in their recruitment process!
- 59% parents said that present day education system is not fostering creative thinking among students and 50% of them believe that they have not much of a role to play in fostering creativity, and that the school should do something about it!
- Over 50% of educators feel that the current education system is not geared towards fostering creativity, and 34% of them cite that lack of resources, tools & programs as the main bottleneck
- And only 10% students are at their creative best in the classroom!
In addition to this, 96% parents and 94% corporates believe that schools need to make more efforts towards inculcating creative thinking among students. Parents and educators also agreed that students need to spend at least 20% more time honing creative thinking abilities in an academic year within the school system!
What do these findings imply?
- The criticality of Creative Thinking as a skill is not really understood well enough by parents & educators
- The onus seems to be on the schools to foster creativity, but educators lack resources, tools & programs to make this happen
- Students also feel that need to understand more about creativity and to express their creative selves in multiple ways!
Speaking about the Report, Rajeev Menon, Consultant at Sylvant Advisors said “Sylvant has been committed to working with and helping education entrepreneurs who can make a difference to education in the long run. W e view creative thinking as a very critical skill for students and initiated this survey with GyanLab to figure the understanding of various stakeholders on this”
Priyadeep Sinha, Entrepreneur & Founder at GyanLab added: “I have been working over the last 6 years on contributing to improve the education system and have built Kidovators as a platform to help students realise their full potential. With this survey & insights, I know that we have the answer on what the next steps for us at Kidovators to make a genuine difference to the education system in India!”
Based on the findings of the Report, Kidovators, a product of GyanLab, will take initiative of introducing Creative Thinking Quotient (CTQ) as a concept in 2017 and roll-out an initiative towards measuring and enhancing creative thinking among school students. Kidovators plans to bring 100,000 – 150,000 students under the purview of this program in the next 4 – 5 years.
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