Gifted and Talented: The Challenge of Improvement
This article explores the key challenges of gifted and talented education faced by schools. It takes account of the new Ofsted Framework for the inspection of maintained schools (link opens in new window) and the specific challenge to demonstrate that gifted and talented pupils are identified and make good progress. The wider challenges are:
- mainstreaming gifted and talented education – making it a central part of school improvement and the business of every teacher
- ensuring effective challenge and support for all pupils, including the more and most able, in the everyday context of the classroom
- making sure that teachers plan to provide opportunities that stimulate and develop potential and meet needs in every lesson rather than just through extra provision
- identifying gifted and talented pupils, including the 'hidden gifted' and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Mainstreaming gifted and talented education
Gifted and talented provision only really works where the entire school is aiming for excellence. The overall school agenda has moved away from making firm judgements about who has the capability to do well and towards a focus on everyone striving to achieve.
Eyre, Deborah (2007) What Really Works in Gifted and Talented Education (page 1), NAGTY
Effective provision for gifted and talented pupils means effective planning by every teacher, for every day's lessons, in every class. In order to do this, schools need to develop:
- shared principles, culture and ways to identify gifted and talented potential through provision in lessons
- clear expectations of planning for gifted and talented learners
- a clear understanding of what works
- effective leadership, management and evaluation.
This is a mainstreaming approach to gifted and talented education. It focuses on what teachers do:
- to provide opportunities that stimulate learners' gifts and talents
- to identify gifted and talented pupils and meet their needs in class, rather than just through extra-curricular activities.
The school-led approach
The school-led approach to gifted and talented education puts at its heart pupils' day-to-day experiences of learning and teaching in the classroom (and on the sports field, in the gym and dance studio and so on). Additional activities beyond the school day and site are certainly valuable. They cannot, however, take the place of powerful day-to-day learning shaped by teachers who take the time to understand individual needs and have the skills to challenge, inspire and motivate the gifted and talented pupils in their classes.
This emphasis on Quality First teaching is central and the shift from external activity to Quality First teaching remains the key challenge for many schools.
More of the same?
For many of the pupils, being identified as gifted and talented meant additional work and extra activities.
Ofsted 2009
A recent Ofsted survey indicates that some teachers reward gifted and talented pupils with more of the same and risk disengaging them. In these schools, gifted and talented education is likely to be a low priority: Ofsted reports that generic policies are often borrowed from other schools, and gifted and talented provision is more likely to be managed by isolated enthusiasts with little influence or contact with senior strategic leadership.
Schools that are tuned in to the needs of gifted and talented learners have strong commitment from senior leaders and plan strategically to improve provision. They often use the concept of Quality First teaching to meet learners' needs to ensure that teachers plan in a more personalised way to extend gifted and talented learners as a routine part of their work.
Quality First teaching
The use of a range of teaching models is the key, and providing those opportunities is a daily challenge and responsibility for all classroom teachers if learners are not to fall into that 'gap' of disaffection and underachievement. What happens in the classroom every day is central.
Evaluating gifted and talented education: The school improvement partner's role in engaging the school: A handbook for school improvement partners (Ref: 00016-2009BKT-EN)
Variability at the classroom level is up to four times greater than at school level.
Dylan Wiliam, Engagement and contingency: the essential ingredients for engineering effective learning environments for all students, London Institute of Education, presentation, February 2009
Consistent Quality First teaching, to ensure provision that supports identification of gifts and talents and meets most of the needs of gifted and talented learners each and every day, is an important part of effective school provision This means moving away from the idea that extra-curricular enrichment is all that is needed.
The shift to enrichment of the curriculum means that all learners benefit. By understanding the needs of this group of pupils, teachers become more aware of the need for personalised provision to meet the individual needs of every pupil in the class.
A rising tide lifts all ships
Joseph Renzulli, in his statement, 'A rising tide lifts all ships' (taken from A Rising Tide Lifts All Ships: Developing the Gifts and Talents of All Students (link opens in new window)), describes the key principle of excellence for all in provision for gifted and talented learners. This involves strategies for improvement for gifted and talented learners (a rising tide), which also have wider impact in enabling all pupils to gain maximum benefit (lifts all ships).
Driving school improvement by the application throughout the school of teaching strategies and approaches that will challenge G&T pupils will raise challenge, expectations and support for all pupils, including gifted and talented pupils.
In the best schools surveyed, the needs of gifted and talented pupils were being met alongside those of all pupils. The schools which focused on progress for all pupils were more likely to plan lessons that challenged their gifted and talented pupils.
Gifted and talented pupils in schools (link opens in new window), Ofsted 2009, HMI090132
Narrowing the gaps: The hidden gifted
Pupils who are disadvantaged are just as likely to have gifts and talents as other pupils. Schools have to work that much harder to identify their potential and help them overcome the barriers they face.
Approaches based largely on intervention and additional provision often focus on a group of pupils who are already identified as gifted and talented. Teachers and leaders have to go the extra mile to be aware of and address the needs of those potential gifted and talented pupils who are underachieving. This can be either because they are disadvantaged or simply because they are not being sufficiently challenged – the 'hidden gifted'.
The most effective schools go beyond intervention to ensure:
- Quality First teaching that engages pupils and provides opportunities to stimulate and develop strengths, gifts and talents
- connections are made between pupils' external opportunities and experiences and their everyday experiences in the classroom.
Inspection and accountability
The Ofsted Framework for the inspection of maintained schools (link opens in new window) implemented from 2009 includes an expectation that schools focus on the performance and experiences of different groups of pupils. These include:
- minority ethnic groups
- looked-after children
- the gifted and talented
- pupils with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.
This involves effective identification, challenging targets and effective teaching to maximise progress. In this way, development of gifted and talented provision also helps to narrow attainment gaps. Of the roughly ten per cent of pupils identified by schools as gifted and talented, there is a significant under-representation of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This suggests that great potential is currently going unrecognised, and perhaps undeveloped (Breaking the link between special educational needs and low attainment (link opens in new window), page 37). Pupil progress data suggests that some schools are not sufficiently ambitious for their middle achievers and disadvantaged learners.
Key ideas for Gifted and Talented education
- Every child has a right to a first-class education.
- Every school has gifted and talented pupils and a responsibility to identify, understand and meet their needs.
- Gifted and talented education is the business of every classroom and every teacher.
- It is grounded in Quality First teaching, personalisation and challenge in every lesson.
- It is at the heart of school improvement, school accountability and an inclusive approach to meeting the needs of every child.
- Identification of gifted and talented learners is a sensitive business that draws on data and wider understanding of background to identify hidden gifts and talents, and to unlock the potential of pupils, particularly those who are disadvantaged.
- Effective provision is school-led – planned, resourced and evaluated with the same rigour as other aspects of provision.
Principles of gifted and talented education
The schools committed to being inclusive demonstrated that their focus on improving provision for gifted and talented pupils was also having a positive impact on the outcomes for all pupils.
Gifted and talented pupils in schools (link opens in new window), Ofsted 2009, page 9
The following principles, taken from Evaluating gifted and talented education – The school improvement partner’s role in engaging the school: A handbook for school improvement partners (Ref: 00016-2009BKT-EN), page 6, underpin a focus on identifying gifted and talented pupils and developing a programme to meet their needs.
- Recognising and providing for gifted and talented learners is about inclusion and accepting that they need as much opportunity, nurturing and support as those who struggle.
- In the context of every school there is a cohort of gifted and talented pupils who are entitled to be identified, closely monitored and provided for.
- Every child needs to make progress against the five outcomes of Every Child Matters and every school is committed to personalising learning.