The Report of the Senate Select Committee on The Education of Gifted & Talented Children: A Ten Year Report Card

by John Geake

It is over ten years since the Senate Select Committee on the Education of Gifted and Talented Children delivered its report:  The Education of Gifted and Talented Children (Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988).  The report contains nine recommendations which, the Committee believed "9.15 ... [being] all within the Commonwealth's area of involvement, will assist our gifted children" (p. 177).  This brief article summarises what progress, if any, has been made in implementing these recommendations, now over a decade old.

Certainly the Senate Report has been a landmark reference in the ensuing debate over the provision of education for the gifted throughout Australia.  In his address to open the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre (GERRIC) at the University of New South Wales two years ago, the NSW Governor His Excellency Gordon Samuels referred to the Senate Committee report and suggested that "the situation has improved somewhat over the last ten years" (Samuels, 1997, p. 5).  It is the nature of landmarks that their topographic surroundings do not remain constant, and this is true for gifted education in Australia over the past ten years.

The lists of those who were involved in the Senate enquiry are indicative of such a dynamic.  The Senate Select Committee was chaired by Senator Mal Colston, who will retire in June 1999.  Of the other three members, Jocelyn Newman is a current Senator, while Michael Beahan and Baden Teague are no longer Senators.  More instructive are the lists of submissions and witnesses.  Of those organisations and individuals who made submissions, apart from the State Organisations, none are currently active in the field of gifted education save for several non-government schools whose gifted education programs have been lighthouses over this period.  Of the witnesses, only one Mrs (sic) Miraca Gross, (then) representing the South Australian Association for Gifted and Talented Children, is a current 'player' (now Professor of Gifted Education at UNSW).  Clearly the batons have changed hands many times in ten years.

Nevertheless, the more important question is: What changes can be evidenced in the Commonwealth provision for gifted education in response to the nine Senate Committee recommendations?  In its summary, the Senate Committee noted that in 1988 "9.13 ... no Commonwealth programs targeted specifically to the gifted exist" (p. 176).  The Report continued:

9.14 The Committee considers that this situation is undesirable and that the gifted, a vital national resource, need more support at a national level, to overcome the disparities in the standard of provision from locality to locality.  Many of the gifted will not achieve to their full potential, unless special educational provision is made for them.  Both they and the nation will benefit from the recognition and development of their talents. (p. 177)

With that commendable and still aposite rationale in mind, I suggest that the current state of play is as largely follows.

Recommendation 1: The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government make a clear statement that special educational strategies should be provided for gifted children throughout Australia.

No federal government since 1989 has made "a clear statement that special educational strategies should be provided for gifted children throughout Australia" although it might be argued that this is implicit in the Senate Committee's recommendations.  In 1996 a delegation from the AAEGT met with the then Minister for Schools, David Kemp, and presented him with a national position paper Australian Futures which had just been endorsed at the 1996 AAEGT National Conference in Adelaide.  Whereas Minister Kemp gave his verbal support for this national policy, he said that the present government had an educational priority of raising national literacy standards.

Recommendation 2: The Committee recommends to teacher training institutions that pre-service training courses include sufficient information about gifted children to make student teachers aware of the needs of those children and the special identification techniques and teaching strategies which the student teachers will have to use with the gifted on graduation.

Since 1989 all teacher training institutions have become amalgamated with universities.  In general, the impact on teacher training courses has been an expansion of postgraduate course and research provisions as professional development opportunities for experienced teachers.  Some of these have specifically included gifted education.  Most pre-service primary and secondary teacher courses, usually undergraduate bachelor of education degrees or postgraduate diplomas of education, have some component of gifted education within core units such as educational psychology or teaching children with special needs.  As there are many competing agendas to be covered in such pre-service core units, the treatment of issues of identification and specific teaching strategies for gifted children can often be necessarily prosaic, with a more detailed presentation of these issues left to elective units which, although popular, are not taken by all pre-service teachers.

Most teacher educators concerned with gifted education would argue that pre-service teacher courses on gifted education should be mandated in the same way that courses dealing with other special needs currently are.  However, it is acknowledged that many other teacher eductors would not be so committed.

Recommendation 3: The Committee recommends to the Commonwealth Government that the professional development of all teachers in the areas of education currently accorded special assistance, namely, the education of girls, Aborigines and disadvantaged children, include the identification and education of gifted children from these populations.

The fairest comment would be that whereas inservice courses on the teaching of other educationally disadvantaged groups such as girls or Aborigines would rarely mention giftedness within these special populations, inservice courses on gifted education always focus to some extent on the needs of gifted children from otherwise educationally disadvantaged groups.  This interest can be seen in the variety of postgraduate research topics currently being pursued, mainly by teachers.  The AJGE Gifted Education Research Registers include research on deaf, NESB, and female gifted children.

Recommendation 4:The Committee recommends that the professional development of teachers in the education of gifted children be supported by the Commonwealth Government.

There is no specific provision of Commonwealth Government support for the professional development of teachers in gifted education, save by default a very small unspecified proportion of university operating grants.  Even then, most teacher professional development courses are conducted on a full-fee for service basis following the Vanstone reductions in government financial support for universities.  Many universities in Australia now offer professional development in gifted education through Certificates or Diplomas in Gifted Education, Masters in Gifted Education, and Educational Doctorate and PhD programs.  A  complete list of university courses in gifted education appears elsewhere in this issue of Australian Journal of Gifted Education. 

Some professional development of teachers in gifted education is provided by state government departments of (school) education, again, funded not specifically but through Commonwealth-State general operating grants.  The largest of these programs is probably Bright Futures run by the Victorian Department of School Education, which has inserviced some 700 teachers to date.

Recommendation 5: The Committee recommends that appropriate videotapes and associated materials for isolated gifted children be funded by the Commonwealth Government and developed in conjunction with subject specialists and experts in gifted education.

There has been no specific national project in response to this recommendation, although funding for some other projects has been made available through the Gifted and Talented Component of the National Equity Program for Schools of the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training. For example, in 1993 the NSW Association for Gifted and Talented Children (NSWAGTC) produced a book and video, Gifted Children Need Help?, for parents, teachers and university students.  A second volume, Gifted Children: The Challenge Continue, was published in 1996. [Editor's note: The title of the NSWAGTC book and video funded by the above Commonwealth funding was Meeting the needs of gifted students in the regular classroom. The two anthology titles mentioned above were funded solely by the NSWAGTC.]

More in the spirit of this recommendation, the AAEGT has published two books for teachers in which each chapter was written by a group of subject specialists who also have expertise and wide experience in gifted education: Fusing Talent: Giftedness in Australian Classrooms (1996), and Teaching Strategies for a Clever Country (1991).

Recommendation 6: The Committee recommends that a national centre for research into the education of gifted children be established in an Australian tertiary institution and that this centre be financially supported during its establishment phase by the Commonwealth Government.

Recommendation 7: The Committee makes no recommendation about the location of the proposed national research centre, but recommends that the Commonwealth Government consider expressions of interest from tertiary institutions.

These recommendations have been addressed, albeit only in September 1997 and without specific government financial support, by the establishment of GERRIC at UNSW, under the Directorship of Professor Miraca Gross.  No special Commonwealth financial support has been made available; the only financial provision is the regular DETYA operating grants to UNSW.

Recommendation 8: The Committee recommends that priority be given to expanding the information on the education of gifted children within the Australian Curriculum Information Network and that this information be made accessible to educational institutions and those sections of the community with an interest in this area of education.

The Australian Curriculum Information Network is defunct.  Such services are now undertaken via the Internet. State and local gifted education organisations are beginning to mount their own web pages.  For example, the NSWAGTC has its own web page at www.nswagtc.org.au, and has conducted several email chat sessions for information dissemination and discussion among academics, teachers, parents and gifted students.

Recommendation 9: The Committee recommends that the Government expand its financial support for the various schools, seminars and workshops designed to enhance the skills of gifted and talented children.

Whereas there has been an expansion in the number and variety of vacation schools, seminars and workshops for gifted and talented children, government support is noticeable only by its absence.  Most universities run gifted camps or workshops, e.g., the Enrichment Studies Weekend at Charles Sturt University, now up to its 54th session, the Scientia Challenge Program, UNSW, which has been running since 1990, or the new Minds for the Millenium program at the University of Melbourne.

Whereas the Senate Committee's recommendations identified many of the developmental requirements for a comprehensive and effective educational provision for gifted and talented children in Australia, the Commonwealth has honoured these recommendations mainly in the breach, neither the well-intentioned policy nor financial commitments materialising.  The gifted education community has been working very diligently to address the educational needs of gifted children, but the dedication of such labours is contrasted by ongoing federal government indifference.  This should not be taken as yet another plea for government financial largesse; policy development which embraces recognition of gifted programming in schools, gifted education coordinators and teachers, (mandated?) gifted education within teacher training courses, and professional development in gifted education, could be of considerable worth. 

Without such a commitment however, although the players have changed, it seems that the game has remained much the same.  Within the gifted education community, the Senate Committee report is regarded as an unrealised potential, much like many of the children of its purview.  In terms of the outcome orientation with which educational endeavours are now assessed, the Commonwealth Government gets a large F for Fail on this report card.  That the Report is out of print provides a poignant metaphor.  Ten years on, it would seem timely for these recommendations to be updated with a view to their immediate implementation. 

References

Commonwealth Government Publishing Service (1988). The Report of the Senate Select Committee on The Education of Gifted and Talented Children, Canberra

Samuels, G. (1997). Address at the Launch of the Gifted Education Research, Resource and Information Centre, University of New South Wales. Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 6(2), 5-6.

Dr John Geake is Senior Lecturer in Gifted Education and Head of the Gifted Development and Education Unit in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne.

This article first appeared in the Australian Journal of Gfited Education 8(1), June 1999, pp 57-59, and is reprinted with the author's permission.

 © NSWAGTC 2007

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