Educating the Gifted Child
This article featured in the Good Schools Guide. The issues facing gifted pupils are discussed further at Parent Resources.
Gifted is one of a number of issues in education that cause the blood to stir. For some ‘Gifted’ is an elitist concept that beggars definition; others do not see what all the fuss is about because a gifted child will always do well won’t they?
Gifted means being different.
Gifted children develop cognitively at a much faster rate than they develop physically, emotionally and socially, posing some interesting problems.
For some, rapidly grasping what others cannot, can lead to boredom, frustration and inappropriate behaviour. In all these cases there are challenges for parents, teachers and the child who sees conforming to the norm as a major peer requirement.
Gifted or Talented?
In England, the Department for Education (DFE, formerly the DCSF) distinguishes between gifted learners and talented children:
Gifted learners are those who have particular abilities in one or more curriculum subjects ;
Talented learners are those who have particular abilities in the creative arts (such as music, art and design, drama, dance) and PE.
Some schools (and parents) prefer the term ‘more able’ or ‘high ability’ children because they see these terms as being less elitist and more inclusive but the term ‘gifted’ is very much part of the official language.
Schools are encouraged to identify the top 10 per cent of pupils in each age cohort and place them on a gifted and talented register.
Is my child gifted?
Some children have precocious talents and are readily identified from a very young age; with parents the first to recognise that their child is unusually bright for their age. Generally the identification process does not rely on IQ or SAT scores alone but contains a portfolio of evidence from different sources including teacher and parent nomination.
Some parents will have been sorely tested by the insatiable curiosity of their very young child.
For a child in the pre-school phase, parents are the best-placed people to observe whether their offspring are developing skills and talents significantly in advance of their years and peers. Early talking, unusual levels of concentration, and the ability to make creative connections to good ideas are good indicators. Parents may encounter problems at toddler group, playgroup or pre-school nursery because staff do not recognise that the child can easily do the things the other children are enjoying doing and so is quickly bored and becomes a problem! This should best be managed by discussion between parents and staff as to how flexible the activities can be to include extension tasks for the most able.
Looking after a gifted child
Within the school’s structure there should be a dedicated teacher, often known as the gifted and talented co-ordinator or ‘Leading Teacher’, to oversee the implementation of the school’s policy on gifted and talented. This is the person who should be driving the gifted agenda, encouraging best practice amongst all teachers and ensuring the children are stimulated and stretched perhaps via a special enrichment programme.
A good school will try to identify very able pupils and to meet their expectations and needs. The school will have developed an agreed policy on how their most able pupils are managed. It is very easy to destroy the self-confidence of any child and this is particularly so when they are talented, gifted and able. Their experiences with their teachers, their peers and their parents are crucial and it is always important to look for the indicators which suggest that a difficult, unhappy or bored child has hidden talent.
Schools should have a written policy on how they manage their most able children and it should be openly available on request and school inspectors expect that there will be evidence that shows that the policy is working. The policy should include how children are identified and what measures are put in place to stretch and challenge them at every stage of their school career. The policy should have the full support of the staff, the governors and parents and be widely available to all. In fact, each of these constituencies should ideally have been involved in the policy-making.
Problems facing a gifted child
Success does not equal popularity. Gifted children often get a poor deal because we live in a culture that finds celebrating success very difficult.
Gifted children are often misdiagnosed, bullied or disaffected.
It’s possible to be gifted and have special needs; many have a learning difficulty (dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory retention problems etc) and the difficulties for a gifted child become compounded.
S/he has an intellect that is more developmentally advanced than their social and emotional needs.
Peer group mixing can be very difficult as the child thinks differently.
They may find work in the classroom painstakingly slow but s/he must keep her/his head down as they don’t want to seem arrogant and precocious.
Fast workers are often told to ‘do more more of the same’, but repetition of the same concepts is anathema to a brain that picks up ideas quickly.
Boredom may set in if teachers do not understand how a gifted child thinks and works. This may lead to the child resorting to bad behaviour with ensuing punishment.
It is no wonder that a young gifted child finds her or his world very confusing at times!
Naughty or gifted?
In school classes where adequate provision is not made, able pupils tend to become bored because not enough is being demanded of them.
Among the consequences of this may be:
- switching off – eg. day-dreaming
- avoiding school (by among other things imaginary ailments)
- disruptiveness, which may take the form of clowning or truculence.
It is a truism that what you expect is what you get. There is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in expectancy and when this is low, the child will almost certainly under perform and conform to what is required.
Providing the learning for gifted children
Once identified, the highly able child needs challenging learning experiences.
The roles of parents and of schools are of equal importance in building this provision. Through parents the child gets access to evening, weekend and holiday time activities and so can be involved with a wide range of ages and expertise that is not found within the school system. This helps to ground the child’s emotional and social development.
Stretching the able child
How these learning experiences are managed within school will depend on the child’s age as well as the Key Stage of the National Curriculum (if in a maintained/state school) and the resources available in the school. Teachers in primary schools are used to managing groups of children of widely different abilities and they are well placed to plan individual extension or enrichment activities. Where the curriculum allows it, the child can work with other staff or older classes on agreed activities, always remembering that what can happen easily one year may be difficult the next.
The structure of the secondary school gives additional scope for differentiating the curriculum and locating pupils in ability sets but the highly able child still needs to have extension activities built into each lesson. The strategies available to a school depend on its unique circumstances but much good practice has been built up over recent years.
Should a gifted child be educated with older children?
The challenge of the gifted child is that of creating learning opportunities appropriate to their ability and age while at the same time keeping them emotionally and socially within their peer structure.
For this to be done successfully parents and teachers need to work in partnership. For some parents the easy solution would appear to be to accelerate the child one or two years. This strategy works well for some children but is not a panacea: older children can be hostile to a younger child joining their peer group; there may be questions of social immaturity with major issues to be faced at the transition from primary to secondary phase.
With thanks to Dr Stephen Tommis former Director of NAGC for additional information. NAGC is the UK’s largest membership charity for gifted children and their families.
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