Re: Enquiry on Education of Gifted and Talented Children

I currently have 2 gifted children attending primary school in the Independent education system.  My experience with the current provisions for gifted students in Tasmania has been as follows:

My sons way of learning, playing and behaving does not fit easily in the classroom and playground activities.  There are daily stresses to him, other students and teachers from his differences.  This has resulted in regular disruption in the classroom and playground.  This is disruptive to everyone.  Resulting incidents are disturbing to other children and distressing for teachers to handle.  As parents we could not understand why or how our son was causing these problems.

The possibility our son having ADHD was raised by the school.  After much research, medical visits and support from our child care teacher we disputed this ADHD myth.  This was extremely traumatic for our family and financially very costly.

Disruption in the classroom and playground was still happening.  We agreed to pay for an educational psychologist to visit the school. We could barely afford this.  We were distressed to hear her visits are funded for disabled students only.  

The educational psychologist insights were helpful and considerably eased the stress for all parties. On the third visit she tested our son and identified him as highly gifted.  In subsequent visits we work on issues that arise and improvement is highly visible.  

The most important issues to us, which need addressing, are:
1.	Early identification of giftedness before problems occur.
2.	Stopping misdiagnoses of ADHD.
3.	Financial support for families and gifted children to obtain professional support on an individual basis outside the school.
4.	Professional support for teachers and gifted children within the school to overcome difficulties. 
5.	Gifted children, like disabled children are substantially different from the majority.  Like disabled children they require a different daily program.  Time to create and deliver a special program is not available to teachers.

Suggestions for improving services to gifted students are:
1.	Programs to target identification of giftedness; in pre-school, kinder or prep.
2.	Funding for professional support on an individual basis outside the school.  
3.	Health funds to provide “No or Low Gap” for gifted counseling services.
4.	Financial support to non-profit associations for the gifted.
5.	Funding for specialist support staff for regions.  This needs to be available across all types of schools.

We thank you for the opportunity to have input to this inquiry. 

[NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED]