High potential and gifted education
At Bellbird Public School, high potential and gifted education (HPGE) is embedded within our everyday classroom practice. We recognise that many of our students possess unique strengths and abilities, and we are dedicated to nurturing these talents to support their academic, social, emotional, physical, and creative growth.
Our teachers carefully identify each student’s learning profile using a range of assessment tools and gather insights from families to inform personalised learning. We offer differentiated learning opportunities including enrichment activities, compacted curriculum, and extension programs tailored to meet the diverse needs of learners across the cognitive, creative, physical, and social-emotional domains. This identification and data are shared across staff to ensure collaborative support for every student.
Classroom environments at Bellbird are designed to be inclusive, stimulating, and encouraging of curiosity, problem-solving, and peer collaboration. Gifted learners, especially in the intellectual domain, experience thoughtfully scaffolded challenges through inquiry-based tasks and opportunities to engage deeply with content.
We implement flexible grouping strategies, student leadership roles, and reflective feedback processes focused on strengths and goal setting to maximise student growth and autonomy.
Our approach is aligned with the NSW Department of Education’s HPGE policy, focusing on these four key domains:
- Creative Domain: Encouraging creativity through open-ended projects, arts integration, and innovative thinking.
- Intellectual (Cognitive) Domain: Providing rigorous intellectual challenges that promote critical thinking, research skills, and complex problem-solving.
- Physical Domain: Supporting development of physical skills and health through purposeful movement, sports, and wellbeing programs.
- Social-Emotional Domain: Fostering resilience, self-confidence, and positive relationships to support the wellbeing of gifted learners.
Bellbird Public School is committed to developing the whole child by recognising and nurturing individual potential across the four HPGE domains, empowering every student to thrive and achieve their best.
Why choose us for your high potential or gifted child?
Recognising potential and developing talent
Our teachers find potential and nurture our students to be the best they can be.
Tailored lessons
Each student has different abilities. Teachers respond to each student’s ability by providing extra challenges and extension activities to keep learning exciting and engaging.
Rich opportunities and activities
Students can take part in opportunities to develop their talent in the arts, sport, leadership and more.
Opening doors to wider experiences
Our students can participate in a wide range of state-wide opportunities that aim to extend and enrich student potential.
What is high potential and gifted education?
High potential and gifted education (HPGE) is how our school supports students with advanced learning needs.
We do this through:
- effective teaching strategies like enrichment, extension and acceleration
- tailored support during lessons that stretch, challenge and inspire
- access to a wide range of opportunities both within and beyond our school.
Our high potential and gifted education opportunities
Our students engage with HPGE education in the classroom, in our school, and across NSW.
At Bellbird Public School, we are committed to recognising and nurturing high potential and gifted students, ensuring every student has the opportunity to thrive within our school community.
Our classroom practices are designed to support and extend the learning of high potential and gifted students across all areas of their development.
Teachers identify students’ learning needs directly in the classroom and apply evidence-informed teaching strategies to challenge and extend their abilities. We offer diverse learning pathways, including enrichment and extension programs, as well as acceleration where suitable, to cater to individual student strengths.
Our classrooms provide supportive environments that promote a strong sense of belonging and encourage students to take risks, think creatively, and collaborate with their peers. These environments nurture the whole child and foster growth across the four domains of High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE):
- Creative Domain: We cultivate creativity through activities that encourage original thinking, problem-solving, and artistic expression.
- Intellectual (Cognitive) Domain: Our curriculum offers challenging and engaging learning experiences that develop advanced thinking and deep inquiry.
- Physical Domain: We promote physical wellbeing and skill development through purposeful physical activities and movement.
- Social-Emotional Domain: Our programs support emotional resilience, self-awareness, and positive social interactions, enhancing the wellbeing of gifted learners.
Our teachers actively engage in ongoing professional learning to better meet the diverse needs of all students, including those identified as high potential and gifted.
Bellbird Public School is dedicated to fostering an inclusive
At Bellbird Public School, we recognise that every student is unique and provide flexible, diverse opportunities for students to explore and develop their strengths beyond the classroom setting.
Our whole-school programs are designed to support student growth and foster high potential across a broad range of areas.
We identify and support students with high potential in the four domains of high potential. These include but are not limited to:
- Creative Domain: targeted enrichment, extension and extra-curricular opportunities such as debating , public speaking, school musicals, visual arts showcases, choir, music groups and student film making. These activities nurture creativity and self-expression.
- Intellectual (Cognitive): Math enrichment programs such as Math Olympiad and STEM extension programs build on the opportunities provided daily in the classroom to provide high potential students additional learning and guidance in these areas.
- Physical Domain: Involvement in a range of PSSA sports including swimming, athletics, football(soccer), rugby league, netball, cricket, touch football and basketball offer high potential students an opportunity to represent at school, zone, regional or state level. Differentiated Physical Education programs provide students with the skills, teamwork and wellbeing to reach their potential in this area.
- Social-Emotional Domain: Leadership development is a key focus, with all students, including those identified as high potential and gifted, encouraged to take on leadership roles through involvement in the school parliament, mentoring programs, Aboriginal Education Team(AET) or through a range of programs supporting our local preschools.
Through these comprehensive offerings, Bellbird Public School fosters the growth of the whole child, empowering students to develop their strengths and reach their potential in a supportive and enriching environment.
Utilising the strength of the NSW Public School system, students are provided with opportunities to access a range of statewide programs to build and support high potential. These 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 Representative School Sport Pathway and PSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at zone, regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.
- Creative opportunities such as StarStruck and Film by... to allow students to showcase their talents to the wider community.
Science Technology Engineering and Maths
Activities and lessons are provided by our specialist STEM teacher both in the classroom and through additional extension activities and lunch groups. These offer students an opportunity to learn and develop key future skills such as collaboration and creativity through coding, robotics and podcasting.
Help for your high potential child
If your child shows signs of high potential, contact us. We can share how our HPGE support can guide their learning journey.
Student opportunities and activities
Discover the opportunities our students have at our school.
Learning
Find out about our approach to learning and supporting students to progress.