Over the past few months a Gifted and Talented Policy Advisory Group has met to develop a vision statement, principles, and recommendations for supporting and strengthening gifted and talented education in New Zealand over the coming 3 - 5 years. 

Sarah Farquhar from ChildForum was involved as a rep for the early years and she says it was important to participate in this group as giftedness can be identified well before children start school. 

The vision statement, principles, and recommendations will be provided to the Ministry of Education for their consideration.

Some of the recommendations are necessarily specific to the compulsory school education sector,  e.g.  Recommendation No 22. that every school has a gifted and talented coordinator. Though, most are inclusive, or can be taken as inclusive, of the early years.

A survey has been designed which embeds the vision, principles and recommendations with opportunities to rate each statement’s importance and also to provide any comments you wish to make. 

A subgroup of the Advisory group, namely  Susan Hassell, Kate Niederer, and Tracy Riley will be viewing the responses to the survey and preparing the final version of the document to go forward to the Ministry.

Please take the time to complete it now by clicking this web address: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Consultation-MOE

The time lines are tight so the survey will close on 5 October 2011.