Inspire – High potential and gifted education

Some students learn faster and more easily than others. These students may shine in creativity, critical thinking, leadership, or physical activities. High potential students are those whose potential exceeds that of students of the same age in one or more domains: creative, intellectual, physical and social-emotional.

Creative Domain: We offer students opportunities to enhance innovative thinking and artistic expression, fostering originality and problem-solving through a wide range of creative activities.
Intellectual Domain: We provide enriched learning experiences that encourage higher-order thinking, in-depth inquiry, and advanced understanding across all curriculum areas.
Physical Domain: Recognising the significance of physical development, we support students in improving their coordination, health, and physical abilities through focused activities and sports.
Social-Emotional Domain: We place high importance on the emotional wellbeing and social skills of gifted students, nurturing resilience, self-awareness, and positive interactions to help them flourish within our school community.

At our school, we recognise and nurture these strengths early. We support advanced learners with great lessons and activities to help them grow and thrive.

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?

Inspire – 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.

In our classroom

Differentiated tasks that adjust pace, complexity and higher-order thinking.
Formative assessment to monitor growth and adapt learning.
Explicit teaching of critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.
Tasks that promote choice, authenticity, and critical and creative thinking.
Differentiated movement tasks and skill refinement in PDHPE.
Supportive learning environments that enable exploration and self-assessment.
Strengths-based feedback and goal setting.
Opportunities for leadership within the classroom.
Structured peer collaboration and reflection.
Safe learning environments that encourage confidence, risk-taking, and perseverance.

Across our school

Operation Art – talented visual arts students may have work selected for display as part of this annual competition run throughout NSWSenior
Dance Group - talented dance students in years 3 - 6 are selected to perform at annual school and local events
Maths Olympiad – maths challenge for stage three students
Public Speaking – student across K- 6 write and present speeches on topics of their own choosing. Selected students represent the school in the Regional Public Speaking Competition.
Debating - students in years 3 - 6 are selected to represent the school in the debating competition.
PSSA – talented students can represent the school in a wide variety of sporting events where they compete against teams from other schools in the local area
Student Representative Council – students are selected by their peers to represent their class, advocate for change, promote and run activities
Library monitors – selected by the school librarian to assist with managing the library
House captains – students who are talented at sport and leadership are selected by their peers to lead school sporting house groups
School leaders - students in Year 5 self nominated to participate in the leadership team. Student voice is used to determine the team.
Daily life invites curiosity and belonging, with Open Library and Green Team at lunch, plus clubs like Chess Club and Lego Club.

Across NSW

Kearns Public School offers a variety of opportunities to support and enrich our students within the school setting and wider community. The programs are designed to nurture talents and provide pathways for students to excel and engage, furthering their potential.

Our students participate in a wide range of statewide and local community programs. These include but not limited to the following:

The Premier’s Spelling Bee - this promotes vocabulary development and attention to detail in a competitive setting with the wider community.
The Premier’s Debating and Public Speaking Challenge - helps build logical arguments and confidence in public speaking.
The Premier’s Sporting Challenge (PSC) promotes whole-school participation in physical activity with leadership pathways and professional learning.
PSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.