For: Students, parents, teachers and school leaders who notice a conscientious student completing every task yet rarely expressing an original question.
The short answer: A learner can believe school is essential, behave responsibly and work hard without feeling much curiosity about what is taught. Valuing school asks whether education matters for life, recognition, opportunity or duty. Curiosity asks whether an unresolved question is interesting enough to investigate. These motivations can support one another, but they are not identical. OECD’s PISA 2025 analysis notes that reported school value and curiosity often move in opposite directions across its comparisons; that observation is descriptive, not proof that schools extinguish curiosity. The useful response is to protect reliable instruction and academic standards while giving learners questions worth investigating, enough prior knowledge to investigate them and space to do something with the answers.
A gateway: the conscientious learner who never asks why
A girl arrives at a small mathematics lesson five minutes early, arranges her pens, opens the relevant chapter and completes the assigned questions. She takes correction seriously. When asked whether school matters, her answer is immediate: of course it does. Good qualifications protect future options. Her parents have made sacrifices. She does not want to waste the opportunity. Then her teacher asks which part of the chapter she wants to investigate for herself. Silence. She is not confused about what to do for homework. She simply does not have a question that feels like hers.
Her classmate is less tidy. He interrupts to ask why two different-looking solutions produce the same number, whether the method survives changing a condition, and whether the textbook’s shortcut is always legitimate. He sometimes forgets to finish routine exercises. Which student cares more about learning? That question is badly framed. They may care about different aspects of the same educational situation. Responsible task completion and interest-driven exploration should not be made into rival personalities. Both require education; neither guarantees the other.
This article begins with a surprisingly useful tension in current international evidence. PISA 2025 reports that belonging and valuing school tend to move together, but school value and curiosity often move in opposite directions. That is a warning against using one positive attitude as a proxy for every other positive attitude. It is not a verdict on Singapore students, an estimate of a causal effect or permission to diagnose a child from a questionnaire score. To understand the tension, we need to examine the different jobs that ‘this matters’ and ‘I want to find out’ perform.
The 50-second route
A student may value school because it offers qualifications, important knowledge, security, recognition or a pathway to adult life. This gives a reason to attend and complete required work. Curiosity is different: a gap in understanding becomes interesting enough that the student wants to reduce it. Strong value can coexist with weak curiosity when work is experienced mainly as a duty, when mistakes feel costly, when the learner has little background knowledge for an interesting question, or when every task already announces exactly what to do. Conversely, curiosity can flourish in a pupil who has not yet learned to plan or finish an assignment. The teacher’s task is not to abandon examinations or manufacture entertainment. It is to make substantive questions visible, teach the knowledge needed to pursue them and allow occasional genuine choice about an explanation, comparison or problem. Judge progress by questions investigated and ideas revised, not by the number of hands raised.
1. School value is a judgement about purpose, not a permanent feeling of wonder
When adults ask, ‘Do you think school is useful?’, several kinds of value are bundled together. A student may believe education increases access to higher study, helps them support family, offers a stable routine or prepares them for citizenship. Another might respect education as a shared social institution. Another values the relationships and sense of direction school supplies. These are reasons to participate. They can be real even during a boring Tuesday morning lesson.
Instrumental value is not inferior or false simply because it points beyond the immediate subject. A student studying algebra partly to keep future course choices open is exercising a reasonable long-term preference. Schools should not require every learner to be fascinated by every topic before recognising responsible effort. The error comes later, when an adult sees good compliance and concludes that the learner must therefore be intellectually engaged. An answer to ‘Is school important?’ cannot answer ‘What question are you trying to understand?’ The two need different evidence.
This distinction matters when families talk about motivation. A parent may reasonably say, ‘Your education gives you options.’ But repeating that message after every confusing fraction or unfamiliar source-analysis question does not supply the missing conceptual link. The child already believes the long-term story. What they need now is a more immediate route into the problem: an accessible contradiction, a useful comparison, a worked example that raises a question or a chance to test whether a rule still holds after one condition changes.
2. Curiosity requires a question that is neither empty nor impossibly wide
A useful curiosity episode has at least three ingredients: the learner notices a gap, sees a plausible route to reduce the gap and cares about the answer enough to continue. Without a gap, there is nothing to investigate. Without a route, the feeling can become frustration. Without personal relevance or intellectual attraction, the question may be merely another assigned exercise. This is why ‘Be curious!’ is weak teaching advice. It names the desired state without creating the conditions.
In a science lesson, ‘What happens to the rate of dissolving if we stir?’ is often approachable because students can imagine a comparison and collect observations. ‘Explain every molecular process in every solvent’ is too large for a beginner. In English, ‘Why does this sentence make the speaker sound unreliable?’ gives a reader a reason to return to specific words. ‘Explore all the themes in literature’ rarely gives a struggling student a usable first move. The teacher must build a bridge between a question and the knowledge needed to work on it.
Curiosity is also frequently misread as public talkativeness. Some learners explore silently, produce diagrams after class, annotate uncertainties or ask a question in private. Others speak often for social reasons rather than to investigate an idea. A fair approach gathers several kinds of evidence: what the student notices, which alternative they test, whether they revise an explanation and whether the inquiry continues once the teacher stops prompting.
3. Why a school-value survey and a curiosity survey need not agree
A survey item about whether school prepares students for adult life recruits judgements about future utility, family expectations and the institution. A curiosity item may recruit memories of intellectual interest, initiative or enjoyment of unfamiliar material. Those are different reference points. The response scales can also be interpreted through different cultural and classroom norms. Agreeing with an institution’s importance does not entail enthusiasm for each learning encounter; enjoying scientific puzzles does not imply believing the present timetable is the best preparation for life.
OECD’s September 2026 PISA 2025 chapter describes the school-value/curiosity contrast in reporting associations among learning attitudes. It is important not to overtranslate the finding. The report does not establish that increasing school value causes curiosity to fall. Country-level patterns are not a causal intervention on one child. Associations can reflect selection, prior attainment, different educational traditions, expectations, survey interpretation or unobserved conditions. They do, however, expose a conceptual error: positive educational attitudes are not interchangeable measurements.
If two questionnaire lines move differently, ask what each line was designed to measure before inventing a psychological story. School leaders should also inspect individual items, uncertainty, subgroup composition and changes over time. This article owns the distinction between valuation and inquiry, not the technical psychometric work of verifying score comparability across languages and systems; eduKateSG already has a separate owner for measurement invariance.
4. A mechanical loop: purpose, task, gap, inquiry, correction
Consider five linked stages. First, the learner has a reason to engage: school matters, a topic touches their world, or a capability unlocks a future option. Second, the task presents a concrete demand. Third, an uncertainty becomes visible: why is this solution different, which explanation fits the evidence, or what happens if we change the condition? Fourth, the learner investigates through retrieval, reading, comparing, modelling, testing or asking a precise question. Fifth, the work returns information that changes the learner’s model. This last stage matters: curiosity without a chance to learn from the answer can become a decorative classroom mood.
The loop can fail at any handoff. A student may have strong purpose but no meaningful gap because the worksheet is all repetition. Another may see a gap but lack prerequisite knowledge. Another may investigate but receive only a right-or-wrong mark instead of an explanation. Another may ask an interesting question but find that the timetable allows no follow-up. A teacher can repair a handoff instead of prescribing ‘more motivation’ as a universal medicine.
The loop also protects basic teaching. An inquiry lesson is not an excuse to leave novices without models. In mathematics, explain the required representation, check vocabulary, model one case and then offer a variable to change. In science, teach what the instruments measure before asking students to interpret contradictory observations. In reading, establish the literal meaning before inviting competing inferences. The right level of scaffolding can expand curiosity by making investigation possible.
5. The hidden price of a correct answer
A classroom can unintentionally make unanswered questions feel expensive. When every question is timed, every tentative answer is publicly ranked and every wrong hypothesis is treated as a personal failure, learners may rationally prefer certainty. They ask what is examinable, repeat the teacher’s method and avoid speculative explanations. That behaviour can look conscientious. It can also leave a fragile knowledge base: students know how to follow a pattern but not when or why the pattern works.
The opposite extreme is also a problem. A classroom that celebrates every spontaneous idea without checking it may create pleasant activity without deeper understanding. The answer is not lower standards. It is separating stages of intellectual work. Early hypotheses may be tentative. Later conclusions must meet the evidence standard. A teacher can say, ‘We are exploring possibilities now; we will test them against the data in the next stage.’ Students then know that being unsure is permitted and that final claims still need justification.
A good lesson makes the difference between wondering and knowing explicit. ‘Interesting question’ is not the same as ‘correct conclusion’. A child who has learned this distinction can be curious without treating unsupported guesses as knowledge. That is a stronger route to examination readiness than either mechanical compliance or unguided entertainment.
6. The easiest false repair is to make school entertaining
When a student seems dutiful but uncurious, adults often reach for games, screens, rewards or colourful activities. These may support attention or access in some contexts. They do not automatically generate epistemic curiosity. A student can enjoy a game while learning little about the concept that motivated the lesson. They can also become deeply absorbed by a plain-looking proof when the explanatory gap is well chosen.
Ask what the activity makes the learner think about. If the reward comes from collecting points quickly, the student may optimise speed rather than understanding. If a simulation allows a learner to alter one variable, predict the consequence and compare it with observation, its entertainment features may be incidental to a genuine conceptual investigation. Likewise, a paper diagram with one missing arrow can create a sharper question than an expensive digital environment.
The most defensible design principle is to buy instructional clarity before buying excitement. Start with the question, the background knowledge and the evidence the learner can inspect. Then choose whether a tool adds a genuine affordance. This is consistent with EEF’s guidance that educational technology should serve teaching and learning goals rather than function as an end in itself.
7. The primary mathematics example: why does the same answer survive?
A Primary 6 pupil learns that one quarter of a set of 36 objects is nine. She can calculate it immediately. A standard worksheet asks ten more fractions-of-a-set questions. That practice may strengthen fluency, which matters. But if every item repeats the same obvious representation, the learner can finish without learning how to recognise when the rule applies. Add a carefully chosen challenge: ‘Can two different fractions of two different totals produce the same number? Build two examples and explain why.’
Now the pupil must choose quantities, preserve the fraction-total relationship and justify an equivalence. Another question asks, ‘If I double the total but keep the fraction, why does the part double?’ The child is not simply applying a rule. She is testing a structure. A teacher can then ask how the representation changes if the fraction stays fixed but the total is not divisible in the same way. This reveals the limits of easy examples.
The key is not presenting every lesson as a puzzle. Fluency and inquiry have complementary roles. Routine practice can make basic calculations less effortful, creating capacity for a deeper question. Inquiry reveals the meaning and boundary of the fluent procedure. The learner needs both, sequenced sensibly rather than sold as competing educational philosophies.
8. The secondary English example: reading to explain a decision
Consider two short passages describing the same encounter. One narrator says a visitor ‘strode into the room’; another says the visitor ‘slipped inside’. The factual event may be similar, but the verbs steer perception. A student who values English only as a graded subject may underline language features mechanically. A carefully framed question gives a reason to investigate: ‘What decision has each writer made about how the reader should feel, and what evidence in the line supports your answer?’
Start with literal meaning. Check that the student understands the verbs. Ask for one hypothesis. Then introduce a counterexample: can ‘slipped inside’ ever describe a harmless, practical action rather than secrecy? The learner discovers that inference depends on context, not a permanent emotional label attached to one word. A final transfer question provides a new passage without the same verbs and asks the learner to explain the writer’s effect independently.
That is a form of curiosity suitable for examinations. It does not require freeform discussion at the expense of textual accuracy. It turns the reading question from ‘Which stock phrase earns marks?’ into ‘Which interpretation does the language actually support?’ The formal assessment target remains intact; the route to it becomes intellectually alive.
9. The science example: why two reasonable predictions conflict
Two students predict what will happen when the same mass of a substance is presented as a solid block or divided into smaller pieces. One remembers that the amount of material is unchanged and expects no difference. The other remembers that greater exposed area can change the rate of some processes and expects a faster observable change. Both draw on ideas that may be relevant. The scientific question is which outcome is being measured under which conditions.
Rather than rewarding the quickest prediction, the teacher asks learners to name a dependent measure, control relevant variables and propose an observation that could distinguish the accounts. The class may need to review surface area and distinguish rate from total amount. The demonstration or data becomes useful because it can decide between plausible models, not because it produces a dramatic visual effect.
After the activity, students revise the explanation with its boundary conditions. The learning is incomplete if they simply write ‘more surface area means faster’ without specifying the process or context. Curiosity is doing its proper job when the original uncertainty leads to a more accurate, usable model.
10. What current evidence supports, and what it does not
PISA 2025’s student-attitudes analysis is valuable because it studies multiple dimensions rather than treating motivation as a single switch. Its reported relationships among school value, curiosity, belonging, perseverance, support, help-seeking and goal setting help researchers and educators generate better questions. But the data are not an experiment assigning students to value school more or less. Questionnaire answers are not direct recordings of every classroom behaviour. Reported associations do not establish that one attitude causes another or that one country provides a universal model for every learner.
For instructional design, the EEF’s guidance on metacognition and self-regulated learning supports explicit teaching of planning, monitoring, evaluation and appropriate scaffolding; it should not be misrepresented as evidence that one curiosity ritual raises attainment by a fixed amount. EEF evidence on teaching with digital technology cautions that selection and implementation matter. The What Works Clearinghouse guidance on organising instruction provides related advice on practice, explanation and instructional planning, but does not settle the PISA value-curiosity puzzle directly.
Three evidence layers should therefore stay separate. The OECD provides a descriptive international pattern. Learning research supplies plausible mechanisms for knowledge, question generation and agency. Local classroom checks determine whether a particular change helps these students. No layer can simply substitute for another.
11. How a teacher can audit a week’s questions
Collect a small sample of one week’s tasks. Sort each question by the intellectual decision it actually requires: retrieving known information, applying a trained procedure, explaining a relationship, choosing among interpretations, testing a prediction, or evaluating evidence. This is not a hierarchy in which recall is worthless. It is a coverage audit. A syllabus can be full of complex topics while offering few chances to frame or test an explanation.
Next, ask who makes the decisions. If every difficult question has the relevant formula already printed beside it, the learner may be solving the arithmetic but not selecting the method. If every composition prompt provides the claims and examples, the student may assemble paragraphs without interpreting a situation. If a science practical gives both the hypothesis and the explanation before measurement, the student may perform the procedure without investigating an uncertainty.
Choose one low-risk change. Withhold the method label from a question after enough modelling. Ask learners to predict and explain one changed condition. Invite two competing interpretations and require textual evidence. Then assess independently, not just through visible excitement. Did pupils select the method, justify the inference or change a faulty model? The audit is a tool for lesson design, not a public ranking of teachers.
12. Parents: preserve purpose without making every conversation instrumental
Families often communicate the value of education through practical concerns: course options, examinations, economic stability and responsible use of opportunity. Those concerns are legitimate. The risk is that every school conversation becomes a forecast of future consequences. A child who says ‘Why do we study this?’ may receive a lecture about employment when they are actually asking for the missing meaning inside the current topic.
Try two separate conversations. The first is about purpose: what education makes possible and why sustained work matters. The second is about inquiry: what surprised you today, what explanation felt incomplete, and what would you test if you had another ten minutes? A child may have no answer after a tiring day. Do not turn curiosity into another compliance target. Offer an ordinary observation from cooking, transport, news, music or a story and ask a genuine question you do not already know how to settle.
Parents can also support deeper work without pretending to be subject experts. Ask the learner to teach a concept, propose a counterexample, or explain why an alternative answer would not work. If the learner cannot do so, that is information about the next step, not proof of laziness. The aim is to keep education both consequential and investigable.
13. Learners: a three-question route when you feel dutiful but detached
If you finish your assignments but feel little interest, begin with a modest experiment. For one topic this week, ask three questions. What rule or claim am I expected to use? What would happen if one condition changed? How would I know whether my answer was still valid? These prompts work in different forms across mathematics, science, English and humanities. They do not require adopting a new personality or interrupting the lesson.
Keep a short note of the question and the evidence you found. An unresolved question is allowed to remain unresolved when it requires knowledge beyond your current level; write what prerequisite you would need. If the subject feels dull because you repeatedly cannot understand the basics, seek targeted instruction before demanding greater independence from yourself. Curiosity often grows after the learner has enough knowledge to recognise what is surprising.
Do not score yourself by how excited you feel. Notice whether you can explain a relationship you previously memorised, distinguish two cases you previously confused, or predict what a change would do. Those are intellectual gains even when the lesson was not entertaining.
14. Leaders: keep the meaning of every metric attached to its question
A school dashboard may show examination results, attendance, belonging, perceptions of value, enjoyment, curiosity and career confidence. These measures should not be collapsed into a single story of ‘engagement’. Improvements can travel together, but they can also separate. A school may run excellent examination preparation while leaving inquiry opportunities thin. Another may create lively projects without giving learners adequate knowledge to do them well.
Use metric-specific questions. If school value rises, ask what changed in perceived purpose or preparedness. If curiosity falls, ask what tasks invite genuine investigation, how safe it feels to be uncertain, and what prior knowledge supports the invitation. Look for patterns across classes and student groups without assigning motives to individuals from average scores. Pair surveys with samples of actual work, lesson observations and student interviews. Explain what each can and cannot show.
The strongest improvement programme will not announce that a high belonging score has solved inquiry. It will demonstrate that learners are gaining knowledge and can use it to investigate, explain, test and revise. These are different but compatible responsibilities.
15. Failure modes: six ways a good intention goes wrong
Moralising curiosity. Telling pupils that interested students are good students confuses a response to an environment with a virtue. It can punish tiredness, unfamiliar language or missing foundations. Better: make an inquiry route visible and teach the steps.
Treating duty as intellectual emptiness. A disciplined student may be building substantial competence through focused practice. Lack of public questions is not proof that the learner has no thoughts. Better: invite a private written question or an explanation check.
Confusing noise with engagement. Busy conversations, games or hands-up counts can rise without an improved model. Better: inspect one before-and-after explanation or prediction.
Removing necessary structure. An unsupported inquiry can overload beginners and make curiosity feel like failure. Better: supply the knowledge, representation and initial model needed to investigate.
Converting every question into an assessment. If pupils fear a speculative thought will be graded, they may stop proposing them. Better: clarify when the class is exploring and when conclusions must be justified.
Making a causal story from an international association. PISA is not a controlled trial of school value. Better: treat its pattern as a reason to separate constructs and test local mechanisms.
16. A four-week classroom experiment without false promises
Week one is observation. Keep normal instruction. Collect samples of explanations, note which questions pupils ask privately or publicly, and identify the kinds of tasks they can start independently. If using a short pupil survey, explain its purpose and protect privacy. Do not publish personal curiosity rankings.
Week two introduces one well-scaffolded question per topic. After explicit explanation, let students predict what happens when a condition changes or evaluate two competing answers. Record the reasoning rather than simply the number of contributions. If it consumes time that was previously needed for core instruction, adjust the design rather than pretending time has no cost.
Week three adds a transfer check. Present a new example without the same surface clues and ask learners to justify the method or inference. This checks whether the question did more than make a lively lesson. Week four compares work samples, misconceptions and learner feedback. Retain changes that improve access and explanation; abandon decorative activity without evidence of benefit. The aim is a sustainable classroom routine, not a publicity story.
17. Why this distinction matters for 2027 planning
School plans increasingly use language about agency, future-readiness, inquiry and lifelong learning. These ideas can become empty if every positive disposition is assumed to be another name for compliance. The student who reliably finishes work is a valuable starting point. The student who asks unusual questions also brings value. Education should teach both to combine perseverance, knowledge and disciplined investigation.
For Singapore families preparing for PSLE, secondary subject choices or later post-secondary pathways, the short-term pressure is real. A student must learn material to a defensible standard. But a curriculum also prepares the child to meet questions that have not yet been printed in a practice book. Teaching a child to value school gives a reason to stay engaged over years. Teaching them to ask and investigate gives education a way to remain useful when the old questions stop predicting the new ones.
Frequently asked questions
Does PISA 2025 prove that school pressure destroys curiosity?
No. The report describes associations in survey data. It does not randomly assign school pressure or identify a universal causal effect. A pupil’s curiosity may change for many reasons. Examine classroom tasks and local evidence instead of treating a broad pattern as a diagnosis.
Is it bad to study mainly for qualifications?
No. Qualifications are real educational goods. Instrumental value is a legitimate reason to work. Problems arise only when adults assume that having a good long-term reason automatically gives the learner a conceptual question worth pursuing today.
Can a quiet pupil be curious?
Yes. Curiosity can appear as private reading, careful annotations, alternative solutions or follow-up reasoning. Public hand-raising is an incomplete measure. Offer multiple routes for students to reveal what they are wondering.
Should every lesson use discovery learning?
No. Beginners often need clear models, practice and prior knowledge. A focused question after instruction can create inquiry without abandoning explicit teaching. Choose the sequence for the content and learner, not an ideological label.
What does a good curiosity question look like in mathematics?
It changes one condition, compares two methods, tests a general rule or asks why an apparent pattern works. It should be accessible with the learner’s current knowledge and produce an answer that can be checked.
What if a child finds the subject genuinely uninteresting?
Begin by distinguishing missing foundations from a lack of personal interest. Not every topic will become a passion. Help the child acquire useful capability and locate occasional meaningful questions without demanding an emotional performance.
Do games and videos increase curiosity?
They sometimes support attention or provide a way to explore a phenomenon. Their value depends on what learners actually investigate and remember. Entertainment is not a sufficient outcome for an academic lesson.
Is curiosity the same as growth mindset?
No. Curiosity concerns interest in resolving a gap. Growth mindset concerns beliefs about the development of ability. A student may believe skills improve through practice yet feel little interest in a particular puzzle, or vice versa.
Can school value and curiosity increase together?
Yes. The finding that some aggregate comparisons show contrasting directions does not prohibit any individual, class or school from improving both. A good design can create purpose and investigable questions at the same time.
What should parents ask after school instead of ‘Did you learn anything?’
Try ‘Which explanation was hardest to believe at first?’ or ‘What would you change about the problem to test whether the rule still works?’ Ask occasionally and listen genuinely. Daily interrogation is unlikely to help.
What would count as evidence of improvement?
Better explanations on fresh problems, more accurate predictions, clearer questions, justified alternatives and independent transfer are stronger than a rise in enjoyment alone. Keep evidence proportionate and avoid scoring a child’s personality.
How does this relate to AL1 or A1 goals?
Accurate knowledge, fluency, interpretation and examination practice remain necessary. Inquiry can reveal why a method works, what its limits are and when to apply it. It complements, rather than replaces, preparation for the assessed standard.
Surgical internal reading
For the wider educational architecture, see How Education Works and the How X Works hub. For the adjacent but different question of completed work without deeper ownership, see How Academic Compliance Works. The separate canonical owner of social membership is How School Belonging Works. For how to make reasoning visible without treating all classroom talk as understanding, see How Questioning Works in Teaching. The Clementi Secondary 1 Mathematics tutorial benchmark shows the local teaching standard behind the worked examples.
Evidence and source notes
- OECD (8 September 2026). PISA 2025 Results, Volume I — Student attitudes towards learning. The school-value/curiosity contrast is reported as association, not causal identification.
- Education Endowment Foundation. Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning guidance. Practical mechanism for teaching monitoring and independent reasoning, not a direct test of the PISA contrast.
- Education Endowment Foundation. Using Digital Technology to Improve Learning. Implementation and instructional purpose should govern technology choices.
- Institute of Education Sciences / What Works Clearinghouse. Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning. General evidence-informed instructional design.
Editorial distinction: Examples are fictional teaching illustrations. No student depicted here is an actual client or PISA participant. Findings are not a claim that all countries, Singapore pupils or individual children share the same attitude pattern.