PRESS RELEASE: Thriving as Gifted: Gifted Awareness Week Australia 2021 (May 22 – 30)

On the 22nd of March 2021, the Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented (AAEGT http://www.aaegt.net.au/ ) will launch the 7th annual Gifted Awareness Week Australia. Over thirty events will be held around Australia in celebration of gifted and high potential learners and to raise awareness of their diverse learning needs.

The Gifted Awareness Week Australia website ( http://gaw.aaegt.net.au/ ) will feature several resources and articles around the theme of the year. “In 2021, Australia has continued our international collaboration by launching a joint theme with New Zealand”, AAEGT President Melinda Gindy stated. “Exploring the theme Thriving as Gifted celebrates individuals, schools, school sectors and communities who have flourished or supported gifted individuals to bloom. The theme also challenges our nation to consider the responsibilities we have in appropriately resourcing gifted education”, she continued.

Gifted Awareness Week Australia 2021 comes as the nation is trying to bounce back in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Like their neurotypical peers, gifted and high potential students have experienced varied responses to learning during these unprecedented times. However, for some gifted students, months away from the confines of the classroom has provided the freedom for complex thinking with little time constraint. With the Australian Curriculum currently under review, ensuring that access to rigorous, relevant and engaging learning opportunities aligned with their individual learning needs, strengths, interests and goals is essential for our gifted and high potential students to thrive.

“Research shows us that gifted children learn best when they are appropriately challenged. They need access to a suitable and flexible curriculum that matches their level of readiness to learn’. Mrs Gindy continued. “What we also learn from the research literature is that flourishing academically is supported by fostering a sense of belonging alongside like minds. When gifted and high potential students are valued, understood and nurtured, they are healthy and happy”.

Kylie Bice, Chair of the Gifted Awareness Week Australia Committee, reflects: “It is so important to celebrate and understand what ‘thriving’ looks like for gifted children so that we can work to ensure that more of our gifted children are able to thrive and not just survive”. “Gifted Awareness Week Australia is also an opportunity to highlight that many of our gifted children are not thriving and raise awareness so that we work together to rectify this”, Ms. Bice stated.

Mrs. Gindy agrees. “The lack of comprehensive national priorities in gifted education means that we have declining academic results, disconnected students and a society stuck in the myth that ‘giftedness is elitist’ and that ‘gifted students will be right on their own’. To ignore the growing bank of Australian research in gifted education is at detriment to our nation and to the wellbeing of our young people who look to us for guidance and counsel”, Mrs Gindy concluded.

Gifted Awareness Week Australia was founded in 2015 by the Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented (AAEGT) to raise awareness of the identification, support and learning needs of gifted children and to celebrate the dedication of individuals and educational bodies who are making a positive difference in the lives of gifted children and their families. The AAEGT is the peak national body for gifted and talented education in Australia.