Leadership for excellence

Gifted and talented (G&T) policy, practice and provision can make an important contribution to whole-school improvement and help to improve pupil outcomes by enhancing social inclusion and tackling underachievement. Senior and middle leaders have a crucial role in ensuring that G&T provision is seen as a core activity in school and not an additional or extra strand of provision.

In evaluating and developing G&T provision, leaders need to ask challenging questions about current practice and patterns of achievement. We have listed these below. Each will be linked to resources and practical tools on the following pages, to describe and develop practice.

Introduction: Establishing the priority

Do senior and middle leaders have a shared understanding of why and how G&T provision will support whole-school improvement priorities? Can they make this clear to colleagues and parents? Explore these questions.

Mainstreaming G&T: Inclusion and personalisation

Does your school enable pupils from all backgrounds to achieve highly? How do you identify and address underachievement of individual pupils and particular groups?

Developing a strategic plan for gifted and talented (G&T) provision

Is your school’s G&T improvement strategy integral to the whole-school improvement plan?

Embedding G&T in school-wide self-evaluation

Do middle and senior leaders play a key role in monitoring and evaluating provision and outcomes for the more able? Does G&T self-evaluation make a strong contribution to whole-school self-evaluation and self-assessment?