Technology age: These students from Holy Trinity Primary School could be among many losing their creativity. EDUCATION lecturers believe schools hamstring creativity even though its one of their overriding objectives, a survey has found. The internet survey by software giant Adobe of over 1000 Asia-Pacific educators gave creativity an 8.4 rating, in a scale of 1 to 10, in its importance to future national prosperity. But they awarded their school systems just 5 for "efficiency in developing a new generation of innovators." While almost half of the respondents blamed inadequate resources and 29 per cent blamed lack of time, 57 per cent said they were "hamstrung by an education system that is not geared towards creativity," Adobe reported. Australian and New Zealand educators rated creativity particularly highly in importance, but less than a quarter felt they were encouraged to foster it - compared with about 37 per cent in India and South East Asia. Almost 60 per cent of the respondents were higher education academics and administrators. Another 28 per cent were from schooling and 10 per cent from vocational training. The results were released this week during Adobe's education leadership forum in Thailand. The conference heard traditional curriculum had had its day, with today's school students demanding to shape it rather than be restricted by it. Australian learning technology advocate Bruce Dixon said evolving web technologies and burgeoning internet access had the potential to revolutionise schooling. For the first time we now have young people with access to these emerging technologies and at the same time they have access to a computer. But the "tragedy," under current educational approaches, was that students could simply use the new technology to reproduce what earlier generations had done with pen and paper. The Australian travelled to Thailand as Adobe's guest.