Ten-year-old Isabelle might have been bright, but her school teachers couldn't tell; she only attended school 60 per cent of the time, got average scores on tests, and rarely answered questions.
Within a year, she had "blossomed into a student we didn't necessarily know from the start," he said. "She started engaging in school. And by the end of the year, she found the courage to do a prefect speech, and became a prefect."Giftedness knows no class or cultural boundaries, but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are vastly under-represented in selective schools and opportunity classes.
His work will be replicated across NSW under the new gifted and high-potential program, to be introduced to schools in 2021. It will give teachers the training and resources they need to identify and extend gifted students.To identify high-potential students, Mr Keast collects internal, subjective data from teachers, and triangulates that with other data, such as NAPLAN results and Progressive Achievement Tests.