Teachers should plan lessons with the needs of the brightest in mind and create a culture where academic success is not ridiculed, a conference on the needs of talented youngsters has heard.
More than 50 local education authorities attended the London conference held by the National Association for Able Children in Education.
They heard that last year’s education White Paper has put the needs of the most able pupils firmly on the agenda.
Deborah Eyre, who heads the Research Centre for Able Pupils at Oxford Brookes University, said: “The key issue is how do you get that level of challenge for the gifted and talented on a day-to-day basis in the classroom?
“It is about what we teach and how we teach it. Talented pupils need opportunities for independent learning. They need opportunities to learn new knowledge and concepts and how to use and apply them in a wide variety of ways.
“Teachers need to design their lessons with them in mind ... It does not help if the curriculum is inflexible.” But she stressed that measures to help them should not be to the detriment of the rest of the class.
The association’s president Belle Wallace said: “We need to take the national curriculum and work with it creatively... It is important to develop a school ethos where challenge is acceptable for all. There is often peer pressure on this issue. Our aim is to change the ethos, not just in schools, but in society as a whole. The school is the catalyst for change.”
The Government has moved to counter the “nerdy” perception of academic children with its “Is It Cool to be Bright?” initiative.
The conference heard from two authorities, Bedfordshire and Staffordshire, both in the vanguard of bringing in policies for able children.
Bedfordshire has sent its teachers on gifted and talented courses run by Oxford Brookes University, while Staffordshire appointed a full-time-adviser for gifted pupils last year.
