ABSTRACT
The importance of creativity in children's learning has increasingly been recognised from diverse sources, including drives for greater national economic prosperity and enlightenment visions of young people's education. One facet of creativity in education is its visibility in national curriculum policies and programme documents. The chapter analyses the place of creativity in the national curricula of the 27 member states of the European Union and in the United Kingdom, and compares this information to the responses of 7,659 teachers to a survey. According to the analysis of frequency, creativity was included in national curriculum texts of European countries but there were notable differences between countries. The chapter shows creativity occurred far more frequently in the curricula for arts-related subjects than in other subjects. The higher ratios of occurrence of creativity in UK national curricula, compared to the European Union (EU)27, parallel the historic attention to creativity in the UK.
