G&T Articles

Click here to download G&T coordinators pack.

Click here to download our G&T leaflet.

Click here to download a report about one of our Gifted and Talented Summer Challenges.

Click here to download G&T Teaching Assistant Resources.

Click here to download information about our G&T provision and support

Click here to download Key Stage 1 and 2 Gifted and Talented Data 2008.

Getting the principles right

Getting a clear vision for G&T work is crucial. When you get it right, it inspires everyone involved to fly and creates a fluid talent pool of staff, students, parents and local organisations. When I became the Excellence Cluster’s Leader for the Gifted and Talented and Creativity Strands in January 2005, I was keen to get our team of 23 Primary and 3 Secondary Coordinators to recognise the huge amount of good practice that already existed within their schools and to develop a shared vision of what our educational futures could look like.

Our participation in the National Training Programme for Gifted and Talented Coordinators run by Oxford Brookes University soon made us realise that good Gifted and Talented practice is all about good Learning and Teaching being provided for every child, in every classroom, every day.

‘If it is good for Gifted and Talented students, it is good for all learners.’ Integral to this are the expectations of everyone involved and flexibility in the approach of adults towards learning, empowering the students to take control and lead their own leading. This enables learning to become limitless and the unintentional barriers that even excellent practitioners put on the learning of their students, finally disappear.

We are keen to celebrate students who meet a traditional definition of what it means to be gifted and talented – academically gifted in one or more curriculum areas or a talented performer, as well as to modernise our understanding of what it means to be gifted and talented. A 21st Century definition would extend the curriculum focus to include students with, for example, a strength in one or more aspects of multiple intelligence or a strength in a huge range of generic ‘learning for life’ skills and attitudes – such as teamwork, leadership, self motivation, and innovation.

We understand that Gifted and Talented provision is not just about a discrete group of students but a strategy for whole school improvement. Our fundamental beliefs that we can all be gifted and talented in some way and that individual potential is developable expand our expectations. Our attitudes towards learners and what we value in their achievements have well and truly being challenged.