‘These kids are exceptional; we need to see them supported in their schools’ – Ireland’s gifted youth and the significant untapped potential

There are tens of thousands of intellectually gifted children in primary and secondary schools across the country. Most recent estimates indicate there are more than 30,000 gifted children in the Irish education system, including many which are twice exceptional, meaning they excel academically in one or multiple areas while also having learning difficulties in other area(s); but there may be many more who have not been recognised in this way. 

‘When we talk about gifted kids, we’re talking about kids who are just cognitively more advanced than their peers and for some kids that looks like they are getting 10s on their SEN tests and As on everything that they are doing, and those kids are the ones who often get picked up and the teacher sees how the grading is going,’ says Dr Orla Dunne, Co-chair of the new Graduate Diploma in Gifted Education at DCU’s Institute of Education. 

‘And then there are other kids who are not getting recognised, perhaps in the way their intelligence shows up is not in the same ways we see assessment in schools… we often see this with kids who are twice exceptional, they are gifted but they might have an additional learning need and that can sometimes mask that child’s giftedness.’

At present the Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI) at DCU is the only organisation in Ireland delivering courses and summer residence programmes for gifted youth to engage with advanced learning materials. 

CTYI welcomes over 6,000 young people every year across its programmes and demand regularly surpasses capacity. Dr Dunne suggested that while CTYI is an invaluable resource to both students and their parents, it is vital that teachers are supporting the advanced learning needs in classrooms so they can achieve their fullest potential. 

‘What we’d love to see is these kids being supported in their schools. What we would love is not to have kids and parents coming to us and saying: my child only gets to access advanced materials one Saturday a week or my kid is only around peers and doing advanced work two weeks in the summer. We want these kids to have access to advanced materials all the time,’ says Dr Dunne.

Looking beyond our shores to education systems in other countries also highlights the importance of equipping education professionals to recognise and support gifted children in Ireland. 

‘If you look to The Netherlands, they have a lot of in-school based programmes and more awareness there in some of their schools. If you’re in either the Netherlands or Germany, you can go as a teacher and learn about giftedness and take these courses. We don’t have that here and that is why it’s so important that the Institute of Education in DCU is introducing the new Graduate Diploma in Gifted Education to do just that. It will help foster an awareness in school communities and more broadly encourage innovative new ways to support these children.

‘In other places in Europe you might see kids being identified for subject-specific [activities] like competitions or Olympiads. Now Ireland does have that, we have the Young Scientist exhibition, and we had a CTYI winner of the young scientist this year, so we do have it, but you see more focus on maths-based competitions and science-based competitions in other parts of Europe, for example and further afield. They have them in Croatia and in places like Turkey and the United States, where there is a focus on maths-based competitions. We should be creating an environment for these to flourish here too, and equipping teachers is a first step in this direction.’

The new Graduate Diploma in DCU is the first of its kind in Ireland and aims to address some of the gaps in schools, and to equip teachers, principals, educational professionals and indeed parents, to best support the learning needs of these talented young students. Find out more about this programme here.