The key to gifted education

The role of targeted education programmes in stimulating higher achievement among gifted children is a hotly debated topic in education – perhaps nowhere more so than in England, where more than a decade of concerted effort to make something of “gifted and talented” education in the late 1990s and 2000s seemed only to intensify dispute about access and funding and leave us none the wiser in terms of what works.

For many, the term is synonymous with selection practices which unavoidably work to the advantage of more affluent families. It is hard to conceive of how to square these with the equity agenda and it was unsurprising that the coalition government pulled the plug on funding for gifted education. Ministers chose instead to emphasise high expectations for all in the context of more traditional methods associated with whole-class teaching.