Thank you Heather for announcing Gifted Awareness Week!

In addition to the activities of the Gifted Education Centre, the aforementioned groups have also collaborated on a range of advococy activities which are available online: http://www.giftednz.org.nz/awareness.html

In celebration, giftEDnz has released its first online newsletter: http://www.giftednz.org.nz/news.html

A competition is also being hosted by the New Zealand Association for Gifted Children: http://www.giftedchildren.org.nz/gawcomp09.pdf

We appreciate your support!

Thank you Heather for your support. Gifted Education is an important and often overlooked area of education. There are many teachers doing great things and national support and guidance is important for this to continue. Keeping educational options open and celebrating the diversity of these student is paramount. Many of these gifted students are future leaders and we must nurture them within our education system. It is often said gifted children "walk to the beat of their own drum"... we must make sure all drums are heard... even the lone one...they often have the most magical tunes.

NZAGC have further information on Gifted Awareness Week and Gifted Children. Our website is www.giftedchildren.org.nz

As the mother of a gifted child I am heartened to hear an MP understand the issues it creates.

My daughter started to decline not long after we moved to New Zealand. Having been in a top school in the UK since the age of four she had a passion for learning and an empathic view of the world. Not long after starting school here she changed, shut down and hid her intelligence.

I tried to get help from the school but because she was holding herself back so as not to be bullied they had no experience of her abilities. I was told that there was no money for clever children and instead they would use her to mentor those who needed a little extra help.

Thankfully after almost a year someone outside of her school mentioned the One Day School. Her assessment for it put her in the top 2% in the country and finally proved to her teachers that she was not moody but unstimulated and lonely.

The result gave us the strength to change schools and the one day school gives her the power to release her creativity.

My story is no different from many other parents of these children with special abilities. We have such a huge resource in in these children that should be nourished, encouraged and promoted.

I applaud your comments and thank you for them.

Thank you Heather for highlighting these issues and also to Maxine for sharing her story. I am part of a local support organisation for parents of gifted children and it is always great to hear stories with happy endings.

I think however it's important also to remember all of those kids who live in areas where there is no one day school or where there is only one school available where their needs are not being met. Because Gifted Education plays no or only a very small part in teacher training, many teachers just do not know how to identify or to meet the needs of these kids. Professional development costs money and importantly time of which dedicated teachers have little.

The social and emotional cost of these situations on some gifted children and their families is not generally known and I believe that it needs to be recognised. Often families soldier on for years hoping that things will get better and assuming that the school knows what they are doing. The cost then also becomes a societal cost - who knows what potential we have lost.

Meanwhile organisations such as ours plod along, sending emails and educating as many people as we can. Thank you so much for joining our voices this week!

Thanks for Your Support!

Heather, your comments show considerable understanding of the issues facing gifted children in New Zealand today. A system that more fully meets their needs would benefit the children socially and educationally, relieve parents of many concerns, and be more professionally satisfying for teachers. In addition to this, helping our most promising children to achieve all they can must benefit us as a nation, both culturally and economically.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for your support.

As parents of gifted children we look forward to the day when our public education system is able to identify and appropriately educate New Zealand's gifted children. While we fear this will come too late for our own children, we believe the societal cost of our currently inadequate system is large, both in terms of the lost potential of these children and the damage they may experience in state education. To this may be added the economic cost as parents attempt to provide for their gifted children and to minimise negative impacts of state education, and the reduction in desirability of New Zealand as a place to raise these children. We can only guess at the loss of satisfaction for our educators.

New Zealand has the potential to develop and offer a rich education for its gifted children, one that recognises and caters to the depth and breadth of their conceptual abilities. This will require real action, not just policy statements. We may then be proud of their education and their achievements, and benefit from them.

Another mother of a gifted..

I have a similar story to Maxine except I have a son and we were living in the USA
Thann goodness for the one day school program. This should be available to so many more students who are going unnoticed in our classrooms. These kids are where the ideas of tommorrow will come from, they will be NZ future inventors, scientists and entrepeneurs etc. We need to ensure we dont loose their abilites at such an early age by the lack of training in our teachers and acceptance of average in our schools

Fantastic to hear an MP speak so insightfully about gifted children. We had to fight long and hard for our child to receive any form of help, and his school only very reluctantly agreed to allow us to try the One Day School.

One Day School was a lifesaver for him and for us. The assessment showed that he was in the the top 0.2%, and being around other gifted children, with a teacher who implemented programs specifically targeted to the way gifted children think, gave him a chance to really use his brain.

Suddenly our boy was interested and engaged in learning in a way that hadn't happened since his first year of school.

I don't understand why there aren't more government funded programs targeted towards gifted and talented children. They are an effective early intervention tool, and encourage our children to explore their abilities in a way that is not possible in many schools.

Reading your post I am hopeful that there may be more positive attention and funding given to those who work in this area.

As a father of 5 gifted offspring, now into their 20's and 30's, it is so refreshing to read your comments, Heather. Thank you.

Now that my grandchildren are of similar ability I am delighted that One Day school exists. It has been wonderful to see the enthusiasm and passion for learning that One Day school has ignited in them.

Your support for such an initiative speaks volumes.

Heather, thank you for your comments.
As a parent of gifted boys, and a teacher in a high school, I strongly feel NZ's Educations system needs to pay more attention to the needs of our gifted young people. I am continually frustrated at the lack of funding for our gifted students, while those at the other end of the spectrum seem to have their every need catered to. If only I had a teacher aide to work with my gifted students, rather than it always being assumed that "the gifted don't need extra help, they're all self-motivated and will pass anyway!!!" I wish!!!!
My two older boys are now both at Uni and are finally finding some challenges, not necessarily in the complexity of their studies, but in the variety and the challenge that other like-minded students offer them. I marvel that my son is keen to go to uni every day, to learn, not like school, where every day was a battle, it was just plain boring and repetitive there!
We must challenge these young people, they are going to be our future leaders, scientists, explorers, artists, in other words, the world needs them!!!

Heather, I am now somewhat confused, after reading your responses in parliament to the question (paraphrased) "Why did you support 100% axing of funds to train teachers in Gifted and Talented Education".
How can you possibly say on the one hand that our gifted students are important and on the other not give techers the necessary PD to allow them to better cater for the needs of our talented?
Please clarify your stance on this.
Do you support improving gifted education or do you not?

Morena Heather

It is really good to have the Associate Minister of Education highlight Gifted Awareness Week in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I am writing from the viewpoint / perspective of a teacher having taught students in Years 7 - 13. If there was one thing that I am not proud of in my early teaching career it is the fact that I did not explicitly cater for those talented and gifted students in my classes when I should have. The reason is that the perception of many teachers (and I might be generalising here but do believe it to be true) was that "one size fits all". One way of teaching fits all.

The introduction of the NAGS into schools pushed many teachers into recognising that we teachers must do something within our classrooms, day in and day out, if we are to cater for the gifted students. Yes one day withdrawal is okay, but it is the responsibility of the classroom teacher to recognise and then do something to move those gifted students forward.

The government's withdrawal of the 'gifted advisors / faciltators' runs counter to your push creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation starts and is sustained in the day to day teaching. We need the advice, support and guidance from "experts" to maintain and sustain day to day gifted programmes in schools. The support in schools must not be withdrawn as we are just starting on the journey towards catering for gifted students in our classrooms.