How money, disadvantage and resources risk holding back our brightest students
When Ashton was a toddler, his mother noticed something extraordinary: Her little boy was talking long before other kids his age and his curiosity was off the charts. Soon after turning three Ashton could read and write. He wanted to chat over the complex ideas he read about and his language skills were well and truly up to the task.
"Mum was really stimulating me, and all of those things came quite naturally," says Ashton*, recounting trips to museums and behind-the-scenes tours that kept his little brain buzzing.
An intelligence test later estimated Ashton's IQ at 149: not quite Australia's "Mozart of maths" Terence Tao, but with the average human clocking in at around 100, Ashton's level of brain power is found in fewer than about one-in-1800 of us, placing his intelligence in the 99.95 percentile.
A primary school teacher may encounter a child like Ashton in their classroom only once in a career.
But with research showing up to 50 per cent of these high potential, or "gifted", students also underachieve at school, there's another layer to the story of Ashton and kids like him.
Most at risk of languishing are those from low socio-economic status families, and gifted programs often still place more boys than girl.
What is Australia's obligation to develop the potential of bright students within a stretched education system? Is the system equitable? And what is at stake if their brilliant minds are not cared for in the classroom?
What does it mean to be 'gifted'?
Humans are remarkably predictable. Cognitive intelligence tests are designed so that scores fall across a symmetrical bell curve with 50 per cent above the benchmark of 100, and 50 per cent below. An IQ score between 85 and 115 is considered average and is reported 68 per cent of the time.
This pattern is repeated in the classroom with most students clustering around the centre of the curve. Those on the lower end are likely to need extra help and those at the other are the "bright sparks", the kids who consistently bubble towards the top of the grade.
But how should we teach the top 10 per cent, the group considered "high potential", with an IQ above 120?
Geraldine Townend, a researcher with UNSW's Gifted Education Research and Resource Information Centre (GERRIC), has spent years looking for the answer.
"Everyone has abilities," she says, noting some humans display exceptional capacity in a range of spheres, from art and music, to sport, or emotional and social intelligence as well as intellectual and academic.
Townend says academically gifted students learn at a pace and complexity significantly higher and deeper than somebody with an average IQ.
Just over four million students are enrolled in schools across Australia. It means as many as 400,000 of them will have a cognitive ability of 120 and above including about 80,000 who have IQs over 130, Townend says. That's higher than 98 per cent of the population.
Raising a child with exceptional academic potential, perhaps destined solve the world's most pressing problems, sounds exciting. From Matilda to Young Sheldon, culture and entertainment reflects our fascination with child geniuses.
Many parents anticipate the school years will be a breeze. Yet as the stories of Matilda and Sheldon also show, these "gifties" — as they are known among parents who lurk in social media groups seeking out others who understand — often have a difficult school life.
In 1955, an American psychology professor described gifted students as the most neglected children in the education system.
Almost 70 years later, Townend believes not enough has changed, arguing these top 10 percenters need as much differentiation in learning as a child in the bottom 10 per cent.
"If I'm working with a student with an IQ of around 130, they're 30 points above the average. Imagine the speed at which you're capable of learning compared with how things are being taught. Very often these students switch off," Townend says. "Thirteen years of school is a long time to be working at such a different level."
But there is a view out there that gifted kids should be left to their own devices, Townend says. The argument goes they have enough brains to sort themselves out, and focusing on these children is elitist when so many others are struggling.
In reality, high ability children are at risk of disconnecting from school.
The world's most famous dropout is surely Albert Einstein who left high school at 15 without graduating and later wrote: "It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry".
Like Einstein, some gifted students leave school having never been recognised by the narrowly focused assessments favoured by educational systems the world over, says Michelle Ronksley-Pavia, a senior lecturer in inclusion and special education at Griffith University.
The result is that up to half of gifted students fly under the radar, uninspired and even ignored, they never reach their potential.
Some become disruptive, the class clown, and others simply give up: as many as 20 per cent never finish high school and 40 per cent never complete a tertiary degree.
Townend goes further. She argues failing to identify gifted children, or leaving them to fend for themselves, is a loss not just to the child but to society.
At a time when the world is grappling with complex questions from climate change to pandemics, global conflict and AI, Townend says our brightest students are a resource from where Australia's next generation of scientists, politicians, artists and entrepreneurs could be drawn.
What are we doing to find them?
Why do so many gifted students underperform?
In November, a group of about 300 academics and teachers from across the education sector came together to hear an address from a charming and eccentric 84-year-old Canadian psychologist, Professor Françoys Gagné. For five decades Gagné has been among the world's most influential voices on educating gifted and talented students. His Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) is used in most Australian states and territories to underpin gifted education policies.
Appearing on Zoom from his office in Montreal, with "my feet in my slippers needing just a nice shirt and tie to appear professional", Gagné talked participants through his theory that explains how the development of academic and other skills relates to the interaction between natural ability, chance, personal qualities and the environment in which a child is raised.
The symposium — organised by Ronksley-Pavia from Griffith University — heard that high performing students fell into two categories: those with innate intelligence, the gifted, who would receive high marks on an IQ test. And those with high academic performance, the talented, whose skills would return high scores on, for example, a NAPLAN test.
Gagné's message: please do not confuse them as the same thing.
All gifted students have capacity to be talented, Gagné emphasised. But not all talented students are gifted.
In a group of 100 students, 50 gifted and 50 talented, as few as 20 would be both gifted and talented, once again highlighting the large numbers who underachieve.
A student with ability but who does not achieve at school should concern Australian parents and educators, Gagné believes.
It can be the hallmark of a learning environment that fails to recognise the student's needs, or of a student who has emotionally checked out: less Young Sheldon, more Matt Damon's genius janitor in Good Will Hunting.
The goal must be to find gifted students, with a sharp eye for identifying that underachieving cohort, and clear a path for them to develop their talents, Gagné says.
Ronksley-Pavia says Australia's education system is deeply rooted in social justice and inclusive education that enshrines the idea no child is left behind.
Yet she believes too often that philosophy does not extend to gifted kids.
"Truly inclusive education means supporting all learners across the full range of abilities. Talent development is the ultimate goal of gifted education," she says.
But there is wider impact, too, when gifted kids underperform.
Australia's stagnation — or fall, depending on how you interpret the figures — in international rankings for things like maths, science and literacy could reflect, in part, the fact that that too many gifted students are not reaching their potential and their talents are not being expressed.
On the one hand a solution for this underachievement must be found in the classroom: how are gifted children identified, how is their learning differentiated.
On the other, research points to an uncomfortable truth: many of those underachievers are from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Researchers are increasingly discovering that high ability but low-SES children are the most likely to miss out on the education they need.
Gender stereotypes have an impact too, with girls less likely than boys to be found in classes for gifted children.
A study released last week suggests that Australia is also showing a worsening gender gap. Girls have fallen further behind boys in both maths and science subjects with Australia ranked worst among 58 countries.
It's about equity, not elitism
A child's ease of access to the education they need raises questions that go to the heart of concerns about educational equality in Australia, and makes access to gifted education an issue of equity, not elitism.
Children from low-SES areas or from less advantaged backgrounds — including First Nations and refugee students — are at risk of not even being offered opportunities in gifted programs.
Research into the subject noted that teachers who are not trained in how to identify gifted students are more likely to recognise it in well-behaved children from a dominant culture and less likely to see it in disadvantaged or minority groups.
US research showed smart kids from low-SES areas were less likely to be identified as gifted or nominated for extension programs than equivalent students at schools with average or above SES. And this was true even after controlling for achievement in standardised maths and reading tests.
In Australia, education policies are attempting to address these problems and offer guides on how to identify gifted students. But the outcomes are imperfect.
Ashton grew up in a low-SES home and knows he could have been one of those statistics: the smart kid who missed out.
It was only his mother's relentless advocacy on his behalf that ensured the government schools he attended acted on his potential.
However, the solution — to push him faster and faster through the curriculum, joining classes of children much older than he was — came with unanticipated collateral damage that reflects the mental health risks that can emerge when education systems get the balance wrong. But more on that later.
Whatever background a child is from, making gifted education policies work in the real world is complex.
Part of the reason is that each state and territory approaches it differently — using strategies including selective schools or classes, streaming, enrichment through special projects or excursions and grade skipping specific subjects or entire year groups.
The Catholic school system offers the Newman Gifted Program and independent schools typically have capacity and resources to provide a variety of approaches to gifted students that can be individually tailored.
The variety of approaches can feel scattered and overwhelming, leaving parents — and kids — wondering what will work best for them while balancing an individual child's social development.
Social media groups are full of parents asking anxious questions about how to take the right step forward.
Ashton moved between two Australian states seeking the right mix.
But there's another problem.
Who anoints the smart?
While the gifted policies are research-backed using theories like Gagné's DMGT, agreeing on which kids are gifted learners is less straightforward and typically left to individual teachers and principals.
Some may be highly trained and motivated, having taken on additional study in gifted education. And states and territories are looking for solutions with updated programs such as in NSW where gifted education is set to be offered at every school.
But unlike special needs — which has compulsory units in teacher training — training to identify gifted students is generally not a core part of teacher training in Australia. Through no fault of their own, many teachers have no formal training in the traits of gifted students and how to identify them. However elective units and post-graduate degrees in gifted ed are offered at universities including UNSW and Griffith where Townend and Ronksley-Pavia work.
There can be clashes of opinion between educators and families. And while the reasons are vast and can include unrealistic expectations from pushy parents, the result is that comparatively large numbers of gifted children are removed from formal education altogether and homeschooled.
It's a story advocates for gifted education interviewed for this story have heard plenty of times before, with many noting that a lack of formal pathways to identify high potential children contributes to a perception of elitism.
"What very often happens is a systematic program in a particular school is based on one teacher who may or may not have had training in gifted education and has the enthusiasm and the time to be able to do a load of extra work to deliver a gifted program," says Townend from UNSW. "But when that teacher leaves, the risk is that the programme dies."
Until the 1980s primary-aged students were commonly given IQ tests to identify children with exceptional academic potential, and then quietly offered extension opportunities related to their results.
There is rightly plenty of scepticism about the ability of IQ tests to capture academic intelligence: cultural biases in testing, particularly towards those who are middle class with Western educations, are well-established. The test environment can be stressful for some. It all adds to the risk of skewed results.
Teachers identify gifted children from things like classroom behaviour and standardised test results. The result-focused approach also risks missing the large cohort of gifted kids who underachieve as well as bright kids whose ability is masked by neurodiversity.
Some parents send their kids off for a psychometric test administered by a psychologist that can identify high cognitive potential, and also flag neurodiversity. It's relatively common for very bright children to also be neurodivergent, a combination known as Twice Exceptional or 2E.
But these tests can cost up to $1500 — another blow to the low-SES kids whose families are unlikely to be able to spend so much to prove their child's capacities.
Money makes all the difference
You can't talk about gifted education in Australia without talking about selective schools.
It is a phenomenon that has exploded in NSW that has a network of 17 competitive entry fully selective high schools, far more than any other state or territory. For example, Queensland has three. They have come to represent what many believe gifted education should be.
From a pool of around 16,000 applicants, offers are handed out for just over 4000 places in NSW, including to 27 partially-selective schools, with competition for the most prestigious and high performing of these schools far tougher.
Selective schools work on the theory that bright kids are grouped together and challenged with advanced work leading to exceptional exam results.
It has similarities with Victoria's Selective Entry Accelerated Learning program (SEAL) but rather than a separate school, these classes are run within a comprehensive high school environment. Students have opportunities to zoom through the curriculum or add depth and complexity even completing university level courses. Victoria also has four selective high schools that take students from years nine-12. Other states and territories have different systems again.
Yet the important point is that fierce competition for entry means potential students are often tutored for months and even years before the exams, drilling content and exam technique in order to maximise the chance of gaining a place.
Applying Gagné's theory suggests competitive entry schools are not always selecting the brightest children, but the ones who are talented and most successful in learning how to tackle the entry exam. Proponents of gifted education question whether these selective programs are effective in identifying gifted students, particularly those whose response to feeling out of place at school is to underperform.
In NSW attempts have been made to change the entry test to reduce the advantage of tutored preparation but whether this will be successful is not yet clear.
Of course, some extremely gifted or talented children head in for the test and blitz it with no preparation, but the majority do not.
And if you a wondering how much that preparation costs, the answer is a lot.
Private tutoring often costs around $100 an hour, or a weekly group lesson at a specialist coaching collage can be $800 and above per 10-week term for one three or four-hour lesson a week. Some kids are tutored for a few months in advance of the test. For others, it's a lifestyle that begins from age three.
This outlay is perhaps one of the reasons why students who access competitive entry programs like selective schools or the SEAL program typically come from families in Australia's highest socio-economic bands — even higher on average than students from independent private and Catholic schools.
And once again, questions about equity emerge: how can gifted students from low socio-economic families possibly participate?
Dr Christina Ho from the University of Technology Sydney is an expert on urban inter-cultural relations with a focus on education. She points out gifted students come from all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds but the way access to selective schools is carried out "may disadvantage some people".
"The problem is that gifted and talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds simply don't apply," she says.
Stimulating high potential children outside school also comes at a cost: Music lessons (upwards of $35 for a 30-minute weekly lesson); school holiday camps in drama, coding or science ($100 a day).
And how this gifted economy works against inclusion for children from low-income families doesn't end there.
Better-resourced private schools that have capacity to differentiate curriculum delivery for different abilities come at significant cost.
Even low-cost government schools with good reputations can drive demand for housing in the catchment that causes prices to skyrocket.
And there can be an emotional cost, too
At the heart of all this research and strategy around how best to develop and extend gifted and talented students one voice is often silent: how do the children themselves experience the often high-pressure environment of pursuing academic excellence in 2024?
For some it is a game changer, a chance to "find their tribe" and finally flourish and feel like they fit in at school.
For others, like Ashton, the social isolation of being extracted from a peer group in pursuit of intellectual challenge came at a cost.
Now 27, with a higher degree in science and a job he loves, Ashton says the rapid trajectory of his primary and high school years took a toll on his mental health that continues to affect him.
At nine and 10, he was in the classroom with 13-year-olds who didn't welcome his presence. At 15 he had graduated from high school and with a special exemption was at university before he turned 16, studying among adults who were not social peers.
Academically he was well-catered for in the end, but Ashton believes now that spending his childhood among much older students harmed his emotional development and left him desperately lonely.
"I can't think of a time that I was happy for my entire childhood," he says.
He believes his experience should be a warning about what can go wrong when the balance between intellectual and social development fails.
"The overriding memory I have of my school years was how isolated I felt from my peers," he says. "I've gained a lot of knowledge and skills, and I do think that I am smart, but that feeling crushes any of the benefits of the advanced learning I was attempted to be given.
"The lasting damage and genuine trauma those years inflicted make me concerned about the social cost of what I went through, even though it came from the best intentions."
He's not alone. Hannah* is another former child giftie. At 12, she spent one day a week at a different school, in a special class for students whose IQ had been assessed at over 130.
"I loved that class. It was creative and off-piste and super engaging. I made great friends," she remembers. "But it made things really awkward for me at my actual school. I got hassled a bit by some kids. I was pretty good at shaking it off, but it did upset me."
The experience also possibly impacted other areas of her development.
"It amped up the pressure I put on myself," she says. "I burned myself out in high school topping the year every year until Year 10. By the time Year 12 came around I had swung the pendulum too far the other way and cruised through without trying. I regret that I didn't engage fully in the learning but by then I'd rebelled against it."
An Australian clinical psychologist who works regularly with gifted students but wants to remain anonymous to protect her patients' privacy, says retaining a peer group is vital for children who are still developing social and emotional maturity.
"Skipping grades based on academic achievement alone does feel a bit like a sausage factory," she believes. "I've seen people in the mental health system that have been absolutely scarred by it socially and emotionally."
Instead of advancing the curriculum, the psychologist — with personal experience of her own gifted education and that of her children — recommends broadening it out. But importantly she argues this broadening does not have to occur only in a school setting.
"You might be able to skip ahead academically but you can't skip ahead in your emotional maturity," she says. "If you skip ahead of your peer group for academic purposes you are missing the richest part of school life, the relationships you form with others and learning about yourself."
What works?
What might a perfect gifted education look like?
Gagné urges schools to move beyond the "age-grade lockstep" that restricts most students to a one-step-per-year learning system even when a gifted student may be capable of learning twice as fast as one with average intelligence.
And once again the key is how to spot the underachieving gifties in among the talented over-achievers.
In 2016 a group of researchers sifted through 100 years worth of research into the impact of ability grouping and acceleration on academic achievement.
They found grouping children into small ability-based teams within their regular class was more effective than grouping kids in separate streamed classes.
Even better was what's known as cross-grade subject grouping whereby students of different grade levels are grouped based on achievement rather than age while also retaining links to their age peers.
This is the system used by Adelaide's Dara School which has developed cult-like status among certain families searching for a different way to educate their giftie. Some families even move states to access this independent school that accepts students from age five until graduation.
"Every child at this school is gifted whereas a lot of other schools have special programs tacked on that cater to gifted students," says Dr Lynda McInnes, the principal and co-founder of Dara that opened in 2017.
"There are so many myths about gifted children: they will just learn regardless, you can't accelerate gifted children because it will harm them emotionally," McInnes says. "They actually really need to be with like-minded peers. They need to be nurtured just like any other child. They just need to do it faster."
Dara uses standardised testing such as NAPLAN, psychological tests, teacher recommendations and parent insights to screen for entry — a deliberate move away from the competitive entry tests relied on by selective schools.
Once accepted, students join classes — mostly taken by teachers with specialised gifted training — based on ability, not age, allowing students to shuffle between year groups and subjects according to which best fits their aptitude.
"We'll keep moving the student until they get to a stage where the curriculum is relevant and challenging for them," McInnes says, acknowledging the bespoke nature of the school and complex timetabling only works because it remains very small. Fewer than 100 students attend.
While hitting many of the gold standard targets gifted research promotes, how Dara performs over time is yet to be tested. It's most recent NAPLAN results show students performing well above state and national averages, perhaps a sign that these gifted students are also displaying their talents.
And of course, as a private school, attending Dara comes at a cost.
At just over $7000 a year, Dara is modestly priced compared with some private schools, but it again shows that money and access are everything.
Overall, the picture that emerges is that all the research and thoughtful policy in the world can't predict how an individual child will respond.
For some, advanced and enriched work is the sweet spot. For others social connection with like minds is the most important goal.
Either way educators and parents have their work cut out. And the solution will be as unique as the intriguing minds of the individual children it's designed to serve.
*Names have been changed
Credits
Words and production: Catherine Taylor
Illustrations: Gabrielle Flood and Lindsay Dunbar
