Schools and parents need to stop worrying as much about what students know and start looking at and assessing whether they know how to think, leading educators and policymakers say.

"The insights that we now have, we know critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, will be absolutely vital skills for young people to survive in a highly complex and fast-changing world," secretary of the NSW Department of Education Mark Scott said.

'We need to make sure we can assess progress in these areas as robustly as we can assess knowledge accumulation and delivery back during an exam,' secretary of the NSW Department of Education Mark Scott says. Credit:Janie Barrett

"We're terrific at assessing knowledge, give us the dates in history, how the mathematical formulas work. I think it's harder to assess critical thinking, creativity ... and the risk is that if you can't assess them, they'll be a bit neglected.

"I think that's the challenge for policy-makers, we need to make sure we can assess progress in these areas as robustly as we can assess knowledge accumulation and delivery back during an exam."