Rather than produce a formal policy statement Dudley has provided schools with a more user friendly general guidance document for schools and governors.  Printed copies have been distributed to all schools and additional copies are available.  See: Contact. 

The following is a copy of that Guidance document.

What is 'Gifted and Talented'?

Gifted pupils are those who are particularly able in one or more academic subjects in the statutory school curriculum, e.g. science, English, maths, design and technology, RE and history.
Talented pupils are those who show outstanding ability in art and design, music, PE or in sports or performing arts such as dance and drama.

All schools should be able to identify gifted and talented pupils.  The term should be seen as relative and refers to the most able 5 to 10% of any school, regardless of the ability profile of the pupils at the school.  Gifted and talented pupils does not refer to the 5 to 10% of the most able young people in the country.

Gifted and talented pupils may:

• be good all-rounders
• be high achievers in one area
• have poor writing skills
• have a short attention span
• have poor social skills
• be on the special needs register
• have behaviour problems
• be keen to disguise their abilities
• have the potential to be high achievers but are not currently performing as well as they could.

The term gifted and talented does not refer only to those young people who are demonstrating abilities.  Pupils who are gifted or talented, for a variety of reasons, do not always show their ability.  Their abilities are hidden or remain a potential.

Schools should use a range of strategies to identify gifted and talented young people.  A single test, for example, an IQ test may provide interesting information but it should not be relied on to identify gifted and talented young people.

Schools should use information from the following sources:

• standard assessment tests (SATs) and cognitive ability tests (CATs)
• Primary school recommendation
• Subject teacher nomination
• Parent nomination
• Pupil and peer nomination

All schools should have a register of their gifted and talented students.  While appreciating possible sensitivities, the gifted and talented register should be shared with all the teaching staff.

Schools should:

Plan their teaching and learning so that there is the right level of challenge to meet the needs of their gifted and talented children in all subject areas.

Plan complementary enrichment events and study support opportunities for able children, eg. university visits, drama clubs, extension lessons.

Actively get across the message that learning is 'cool'.

Useful websites

www.dudley.gov.uk/able
www.warwick.ac.uk/gifted
www.worldclassarena.org
www.nc.uk.net/gt
www.nace.co.uk
www.nogcbritain.org.uk
www.xcalibre.ac.uk
www.standards.dfee.gov.uk/excellence/gif/gt
www.sportengland.org
www.brooks.ac.uk/faculty
www.aspire-ma.com

• Appoint a co-ordinator for gifted and talented.
• Have a gifted and talented policy statement.
• Share information about gifted and talented children so as to build up a picture of the whole child.
• Encourage the development of more challenging mainstream and homework activities.
• Talk to young people about their learning and how they can be helped to make progress.
• In some cases provide a young person with a learning mentor with whom they can regularly discuss their progress.
• Invite the governing body to nominate a governor to support the work of the coordinator.
• Encourage young people who are gifted in mathematics or in problem solving to attempt the World Class Tests.
• Advise able young people to join the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth.
• Link up with other schools to establish a Creative Writing Programme enabling young people to work with authors.
• Make use of the Athlectic and Sprts Award Schermes like the ESAA.

• Set up a debating society and get involved in the school debates in the Council Chambers.

• Develop activities which require young people to analyse, explain and evaluate rather than recall or describe.
• Encourage the use of thinking strategies like, odd one out, continuum evaluation, pyramid, mystery, can of worms, community of enquiry and story lines.
• Deliberately plan thinking time so young people have a chance to provide more considered and detailed respones.
• Formally teach reasoning skills exploring concepts like: using analogy, anecdotal reasoning, generalising from the particular, begging the qiestion, emotive language and respectfully disagreeing.
• Encourage pupil discussion using techniques like: the teacher as facilitator, speech cards and circle seating.
• Develop 'techno games' problem solving activities combining science and technology.
• Self-evaluate your gifted and talented provision using for example 'The Challenge Award Framework' produced by NACE.
• Use the Autumn package and the Pupil Achievement Tracker (PAT) to identify able undrachievers in order to target support