As the co-ordinator for gifted children at the Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), Robyn Lonergan is often asked: "how many gifted children do we have on campus?" She is non-committal.

"I can't put a number on it. Students are supported in mainstream classes, others have special extension work. A group of students from Grade 2 are coming to special math class once a week, or a few students are taking extra classes I don't believe you label a child, you just label the need."

Lonergan is the only specialist teacher for gifted children at the school, before she arrived there was no teacher dedicated to the task, gifted was the responsibility of classroom teachers with some assistance from the learning support teachers.

"Now it is just me across the whole school, but there will be two gifted teachers next year. The school is recognizing that we need to support the children who are not challenged by the current situation."

As Lonergan said, often a school feels very responsible for the children who have problems such as reading difficulties, but rarely feels responsible for these children who can do a lot more if given the opportunity. This is not the situation at WAB.

Over the past few months, she has done a lot of talking to the senior management, Grade-level leaders, department heads and teachers about the gifted and talented programme. "I am now working to try and establish as part of the school culture that we look after the needs of gifted children equally with all other individual needs," she said.

In some schools like the British School of Beijing (BSB) and Dulwich College Beijing (DCB), the gifted and talented programme is well embedded in the learning support strategy.

As Angela Mutinda, the DCB learning support teacher, said such programme is "automatically there in any good teaching environment."

The three schools take different approaches towards identifying the gifted students on campus.

At BSB, the starting point of identifying gifted and talented students is the class teacher. Meanwhile, Dan Stratford, the BSB learning support teacher, will consult parents, look at students' past records, and discuss these issues at staff meetings.

"Basically, we define the programme in five aspects, such as intellectual (like English, mathematics, science), artistic creativity (like art design, music and drama), physical (like sports, dance), social and leadership qualities," said Gilbard Honey Jones, the BSB principal.

At DCB, a talented student refers to one that excels above all the rest, either in the academic sphere or in the non-academic, like sports, music and drama.

"They are usually found out by the tests done by educational psychologists," said Angela Mutinda. "Some children come with those tests already done, so they are already identified as gifted or talented, others would be identified in school just through the normal regular teaching."

"With every student we enrol, we will look at their past records, particularly those children who were identified as gifted and talented in the past," said Bill Jarvis, director of studies at Dulwich College Beijing. "And also as part of our educational program here, we have a quality and ability test and those tests tend to show up students' goals across the learning areas."

"Our definition of gifted students at WAB is more looking at the student within the school context. We say a gifted child is someone who has high ability or high achievement, and because of this has educational needs that are significantly different," said Lonergan.

"Every child is different. So we don't have one way of looking at them, we look at multiple criteria. We might look at their ability through tests, teacher nomination, parent nomination, the students' work, and reports available from educational psychologists."

Lonergan also says the school uses a non-verbal test every year to discover the gifted ones on campus. "Grade 3, 5, 7 and 10 participate in the International Schools Assessment (ISA), and I look at the results as well."

The coordinator thinks an important part of her role is to work with the teachers to assist them in better knowing the children who have those abilities and assist them to keep challenging them and make sure the children stay excited about learning.

"Talented children can be very different, and they are often very aware they are different. Helping a teacher to give the child more challenging work is needed," she said.

Class placement can also be very important, and very occasionally a student can be given the opportunity to work with older children in a subject or grade acceleration.

However, Jarvis dealt with this situation in a different way. He gave an example of a Year 3 child who is already capable of doing what Year 6 students do.

"He has a team of teachers working in that area to provide him with course work and structured tasks that let him extend himself," said the director of studies.

"Somebody would ask 'Why wouldn't you move that child a few years ahead?' But we should be mindful about the gifted kids and make sure they feel socially comfortable."

Jarvis said it is part of the school policy to make sure every single child fulfils all the potential they have, and even if they haven't achieved what their parents did, they still feel like "I could not have done even better."

Meanwhile, Jarvis believes the broad curriculum can give each of the students something to get into.

He said that providing the gifted and talented program presents a real challenge both to the students and also the teachers.

"If you have a talented child in your class, it is not about giving them more of what they already can do, it is actually giving them other activities that can stretch them and ensure their minds are challenged," said he. "We hope the children generally reach their potential. I call it extended grasp. Potential is something you know they can do and ensure they get there, and it satisfies the child even more."

Kerensa Mason, a girl in Year 5 at BSB, who plays Guzheng (an ancient Chinese instrument) very well, was given the opportunity to perform in the school assembly.

"That is an extension for her," said Jones. "We have staff from the Royal Academy of Music to give her highly-qualified exercises."

Recently, BSB has got a qualified dance teacher from an international dance school, who looks after children who have gifts in dance or gymnastics and enriches them through extended practices. The school also provides workshops for teachers so that they can get knowledge from each other.

"When we talk about the gifted and talented program, we are talking about good teaching and learning," echoed Jarvis.

(China Daily 03/17/2006 page18)