High potential and gifted education

Our classroom practices support and extend high potential and gifted students. Our supportive classroom environments promote a sense of belonging and encourage risk-taking, creativity and collaboration. We identify students' learning needs in the classroom and use evidence-informed teaching practices to challenge and extend students. We provide learning pathways, including enrichment and extension programs.

Strategies our teachers use to support HPGE include:

• Differentiated tasks that adjust pace, complexity and higher-order thinking​.

• Formative assessment to monitor growth and adapt learning​.
• Explicit teaching of critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.
• Opportunities for abstraction, inquiry, and curriculum depth​.
• Tasks that promote choice, authenticity, and critical and creative thinking​ including cross-curricular projects.
• Flexible grouping for collaborative ideation and presentation​.
• Differentiated movement tasks and skill refinement in PDHPE​.
• Targeted learning goals for coordination, agility, and control​.
• Opportunities to take on lead roles in physical demonstrations or team strategy​.
• Supportive learning environments that enable exploration and self-assessment.
• Strengths-based feedback and goal setting.​
• Opportunities for leadership within the classroom​.
• Structured peer collaboration and reflection.​
• Safe learning environments that encourage confidence, risk-taking, and perseverance​.

St Andrews Public School offers a range of whole-school programs that support student growth. We identify and support students with high potential through targeted enrichment, extension and extra-curricular opportunities such as debating, competitions, critical thinking workshops, and STEM clubs. All our students, including high potential and gifted students, are encouraged to take on leadership roles through student representative council leadership, mentoring programs and peer coaching.

Some of our opportunities include:

• Debating
• STEM clubs
• Academic competitions
• Critical thinking workshops
• Visual arts showcase
• Sport squads
• House competitions
• Performance-based movement groups
• Student leadership (SRC)
• Wellbeing programs
• Participation in whole-school inclusion and wellbeing initiatives.

Our students participate in a wide range of statewide programs to extend and enrich student potential.

Programs our students can access include:

• The Premier’s Spelling Bee promotes our students’ vocabulary development and attention to detail in competitive settings.
• The Premier’s Debating Challenge helps our students to build logical arguments and confidence in public speaking.
• The Premier’s Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition develops students’ public speaking and persuasive skills and confidence in public speaking.
• The Schools Spectacular is an iconic performing arts event that celebrates the talents, diversity and creativity of students from across NSW public schools.
• The Premier’s Sporting Challenge (PSC) promotes whole-school participation in physical activity with leadership pathways and professional learning.
• The Representative School Sport Pathway and PSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.