General Election February 2016 – Time for Gifted Children To Be Brought In From The Cold.

30,000 Children Are Ignored Every Year By Ireland’s Education System

The General Election will be held on the Friday 26th February 2016.

Whichever party or parties win the race, a Programme for Government will be developed which will guide the actions of the new government over the next 5 years.

The 2011-2016 Programme for Government contained aspirations regarding provisions for Gifted education.

We will examine supports in place for gifted students and create improved links with third level institutions on regional basis, to provide gifted students with access to new programmes or educational resources.

As you can see, this proposal was tied into action at Third Level. This was short sighted and questions have to be asked about how this was drawn up. Linking the proposal to Third Level, badly underfunded and with no provision nor capacity for Gifted education itself, ensured that there would be no progress at Primary or Second Level.

The election is a chance for advocates of Gifted education to press candidates for support. While there are gold-standard models of provision, there is a lot that can be achieved for no additional cost to the system.

Gifted and Talented Network Ireland is calling on the next government to commit to the following actions as a minimum to enable some progress at Second Level.

  1. Circularise all schools requiring them to ensure their SEN policy includes provision for exceptionally able children.
  1. Require Inspectors of Teaching and Learning to seek evidence of planning for Gifted children.
  1. Require schools to access in-service training in the educational needs of exceptionally able children.
  1. Require schools to report on numbers of exceptionally able children in school returns which include number of SEN students.

Please feel free to post, email or otherwise circulate this information leaflet to your local candidates. 4 No-Cost Proposals to Improve Provision for Gifted Children in Ireland’s Schools

Myths about Gifted children and their education.

(In Ireland, the term ‘Exceptionally Able’ is the official term for ‘Gifted’)