Gifted and Talented

This is the second year of the Gifted and Talented programme. Last year was very much a flagship year with events and trips orgainsed both whole school and by subject teams. There was also a whole staff INSET last year on issues surrounding G&T (such as mentoring, monitoring in subject teams, teaching and learning and extra curricular activities and support) which was accompanied by a staff handbook on G&T.

This year the main focus is threefold:
• Monitoring G&T students using whole school monitoring systems. This will bring into one system the different strands of EAL, SEN, literacy and numeracy. This is being done with R. Burton and the coordinators of the whole school issues mentioned
• Teaching and learning - the main push will be on thinking skills, formative assessment and extension activities
• GT extra curricular activities / events - these need to be evaluated to assess the impact they are having on students involved. There also needs to be an audit of who is doing what already with regards to this.

So far this year there have already been some developments to tackle these three targets. Firstly, there are regular meetings between the coordinators of SEN, EAL, literacy, numeracy and G&T to ensure that a whole school approach is being used. This will ensure that each child’s specific and most important needs are met across the school from the coordinators. Secondly, there has been a complete overhaul of the GT register to ensure that it is a true and fair representation of the GT students in the Academy. This has been done using CATS data analysis and teacher nominations (although there are still many subject teams whop are yet to nominate any students). Thirdly, there have already been several key projects either starting or already running for GT students (year 7 Opera project from last year will run again, English department and their coursework trip for top sets, year 12 / 13 trip to London Met University to listen to a Holocaust lecture, year 8 students have attended a high achievers workshop at Charlton football club, etc). The system of awarding funds has also slightly altered after last year’s evaluation of G & T. Staff who bid for projects must now also ensure that their project is properly evaluated by the students involved so that we can assess the impact that they have had. Finally, the parents of G & T students will soon be notified that their child is on the Business Academy’s G &T register. They will also receive a leaflet which I have designed so that they can become a bit more aware of the issues surrounding GT children. The leaflet also has helpful suggestions for parents to encourage their child’s development at home.

Karen Chamberlain

Telephone number: 0208 320 4800, Fax number: 0208 320 4810, e-mail: [email protected], www.thebusinessacademy.org

Principal: Mr Tom Widdows, Chair of Governors:Tim Garnham, Number of Students on Roll: 1031