Gifted and Talented : Perhaps We Should Start with the Curriculum

Gifted and Talented: Perhaps We Should Start with the Curriculum

If Gifted and Talented provision is making a comeback, let's make sure we've learned something from the past.

There's been talk recently of bringing back Gifted and Talented provision in schools, with an article featuring in the TES just this week. For those of us who remember the initiatives of the early 2000s, it all feels rather familiar:

The registers

The identification criteria

The enrichment programmes

The special opportunities for children considered to have exceptional abilities.

I remember being commissioned by Lancashire G&T coordinator, Janet Gaskell, at that time to lead on a music programme. We had a blast!

The intentions were good. Children with particular talents or exceptional academic abilities deserve to be recognised, nurtured and challenged. However, I wonder whether we started in the wrong place.

We identified the children first, then considered what additional provision we might offer them.

What if, this time, we started with the curriculum?

Are We Identifying Ability or Attainment?

One of the challenges with Gifted and Talented provision has always been deciding which children should be included.

High attainment is relatively easy to recognise. We have assessment data, test results and examples of work that demonstrate when children are performing beyond age-related expectations. High attainment and high potential, though, aren't necessarily the same thing.

Just imagine two children in a Year 4 maths class…

One consistently achieves the highest scores, calculates quickly and completes tasks accurately.

Another performs at the expected standard but demonstrates unusual insight when tackling unfamiliar problems, spotting patterns or explaining mathematical relationships.

Both children may have considerable potential, but if we rely primarily on attainment data, which one is more likely to be identified?

This matters because children don't all arrive at school with the same experiences and opportunities. Some have already had considerable opportunities to develop their abilities. Others may have talents that haven't yet had the chance to emerge…

and that's where curriculum design becomes so important!

How can we recognise exceptional potential if our curriculum doesn't create opportunities for children to demonstrate it?

The Curriculum Doesn't Just Develop Talent. It Reveals It.

We tend to think of the curriculum as the knowledge and skills we want children to acquire and, of course, that's fundamental. However, a curriculum also determines the kinds of thinking children are invited to do, the problems they're asked to solve and the opportunities they have to demonstrate their understanding.

Consider a history curriculum.

If children are primarily asked to remember dates, recall facts and answer comprehension questions, those with strong memories and literacy skills are likely to excel.

But what about the child who notices contradictions between historical sources? The one who makes unexpected connections between events? Or the one who can construct a particularly sophisticated argument about why something happened?

If the curriculum rarely provides opportunities for those kinds of thinking, how would we ever discover those abilities?
That’s why we have baked this into our new curriculum model.

It depends on something vitally important: children being taught the knowledge and disciplinary understanding that make deeper thinking possible.

A curriculum that focuses only on what children can remember may never reveal the full extent of what they can do with what they know.

Challenge Should Be Designed In, Not Bolted On

One of the problems with some earlier Gifted and Talented approaches was that challenge became something additional.

An extension worksheet, a special project (like my music one!), an enrichment afternoon. Perhaps work borrowed from the next year group's curriculum.

There is absolutely a place for enrichment and specialist opportunities. Some children need provision that goes beyond what can reasonably be offered through the everyday classroom curriculum.

Surely, though, our first question should be whether the curriculum itself offers sufficient intellectual challenge.

Take a Year 5 history unit exploring Julius Caesar.

All children need to acquire the essential historical knowledge. They need to understand the events, the people involved and the circumstances surrounding Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon.

However, a well-designed curriculum doesn't have to stop there.

Children can investigate the different causes, examine evidence, consider alternative interpretations and evaluate which factors were most significant. These opportunities provide greater depth without necessarily introducing more content.

The same principle applies in other subjects.

In science, pupils might move from carrying out an investigation to evaluating its reliability.

In music, they might move from performing a composition to making deliberate choices about how musical elements communicate an intended effect.

This isn't simply about making the work harder.

It's about designing meaningful progression in the quality and sophistication of children's thinking.

Challenge isn't necessarily more content, more tasks or faster progression. Sometimes it's greater depth within the learning itself.

Curriculum Breadth Matters Just as Much as Depth

There's another reason why curriculum design matters in this debate.

We cannot discover talent in areas children have never had the opportunity to explore.

If the curriculum becomes increasingly narrow, the opportunities to recognise different kinds of ability narrow with it.

A child might not stand out in English or mathematics but demonstrate remarkable musical understanding, artistic imagination, historical reasoning or practical problem-solving.