High potential and gifted education at Bowning Public School

At Bowning Public School, we believe every child brings unique strengths, passions, and the capacity for excellence. As a proud small school, we know our students deeply—our size allows us to notice potential early, respond quickly, and tailor learning in ways that honour the whole child.

Our High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE) approach supports students across the four domains — intellectual, creative, social-emotional, and physical — ensuring that every learner is challenged, inspired, and supported to reach their full potential.

We are fully aligned with the NSW Department of Education’s High Potential and Gifted Education Policy, ensuring equitable, evidence-informed opportunities for students to thrive both within and beyond our school. At Bowning, nurturing high potential isn’t a program—it’s embedded in our culture, our relationships, and our daily teaching.

HPGE Across the Classroom at Bowning Public School.

High Potential and Gifted Education is woven into everyday practice at Bowning Public School. In our small, multi-age classrooms, students benefit from personalised instruction, close teacher–student relationships, and flexible learning structures that allow them to flourish.

Our teachers:

Identify and respond to students’ learning needs using evidence-informed and explicit teaching practices.
Provide flexible learning pathways including extension, enrichment, and acceleration—made even more achievable in a small-school setting.
Create inclusive, supportive environments where every child feels known, valued, and encouraged to take positive learning risks.
Deliver rich learning tasks that promote choice, creativity, critical thinking and real-world problem-solving.
Use differentiated instruction to adjust pace, complexity and content so students can progress at the level that is right for them.
Set targeted learning goals and provide strengths-based feedback to support each child’s unique learning profile.
Engage in professional learning to ensure teaching reflects current research and best practice in High Potential and Gifted Education.

In a school where every student is visible, every strength is noticed, and every achievement is celebrated, these practices ensure all learners have daily opportunities to think, create, lead and explore.

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?

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

High potential and gifted education lives in daily practice at Bowning Public School. Our approach ensures all students have opportunities to think, create, lead and explore every day.

Teachers identify students' learning needs in the classroom and use evidence-informed teaching practices to challenge and extend students. We provide learning pathways, including enrichment and extension programs and acceleration.
Our supportive classroom environments promote a sense of belonging and encourage risk-taking, creativity and collaboration.
Groups are flexible, students take lead roles, and feedback is strengths-based with clear goals.
Our teachers engage in professional learning to support the diverse needs of all students, including our high potential and gifted learners.

Many of our students demonstrate exceptional talents, and we are committed to supporting and developing these strengths into meaningful achievements.

Our teachers identify each student’s learning needs within the classroom and apply evidence-based teaching strategies to extend and challenge their abilities. We provide a variety of learning pathways, including enrichment programs, extension tasks, and acceleration when suitable. Students are identified by teachers (with family insights welcome and encouraged) as having high potential or giftedness across the cognitive, creative, physical, or social-emotional domains. This information is shared throughout the school to ensure effective support for every learner.

We create nurturing classroom environments that foster a sense of belonging, encourage creativity, risk-taking, and collaboration. Gifted students, particularly in the cognitive domain, receive targeted instruction to meet their individual level of challenge. They engage in open-ended activities and enrichment opportunities.

Flexible groupings, leadership opportunities, and feedback centred on strengths with clear goals and self-assessment are key features of our approach.

Our practices align with the NSW Department of Education’s HPGE policy, which highlights the importance of supporting giftedness across four essential domains:

Creative Domain: Supporting students to develop original ideas and express themselves through creative thinking, problem-solving, and artistic pursuits.
Intellectual (Cognitive) Domain: Offering challenging learning experiences that nurture advanced thinking, deep inquiry, and intellectual development.
Physical Domain: Encouraging physical growth and wellbeing through activities that improve coordination, health, and physical skills.
Social-Emotional Domain: Promoting emotional resilience, self-awareness, and positive social interactions to support the wellbeing of gifted learners.

At Bowning Public School, we are dedicated to fostering the whole child by recognising and nurturing each student’s potential across these four domains, ensuring every learner is empowered to succeed.

Across our school and Community

Beyond the classroom, our students access rich opportunities to deepen their talents. Every student is individual, so opportunities are flexible and diverse.

Talent is celebrated through school performances within our school and beyond such as Rise Up Dance Competition, Pulse Dance Competition, Footsteps Dance, Creative Arts such as pottery and working with local artists. Ongoing music opportunities through Amplify and connections with the Hume Conservatorium.
Leadership and student voice initiatives empower students to lead and contribute through structured peer support opportunities, leadership projects. Our Year 5 and 6 students participate in Unleash Your Potential every second year. Our students lead younger students in everyday school opportunities.
Daily life invites curiosity and belonging, with The Hive open at lunch and recess with a range of student led clubs based student interests and passions.
Students deepen strengths through public speaking, STEM, coding, lego robotics. Partnership with Science such as Landcare and Cinguan Space.
Sporting development pathways and representative opportunities for students demonstrating high physical potential, the representative school sport pathway and PSSA competitions.

At Bowning Public School, we offer a wide range of opportunities to support and enrich our High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE) students both within the school and the wider community. Our programs are designed to nurture talents across multiple domains, providing pathways for students to excel and engage beyond the classroom.

Students can participate in our Chess Team, which fosters strategic thinking and problem-solving skills. We offer diverse Creative Arts opportunities, including dance ensembles, theatre, and combined small schools creative arts events, allowing students to develop their artistic talents and collaborate with peers. This is all done in a supportive environment.

For those with sporting interests, we have school sporting teams and representative sporting pathways that encourage physical development and teamwork. Leadership skills are cultivated through involvement in the Student Representative Council and various school leadership roles.

We also support students in developing their communication and critical thinking abilities through Public Speaking. Additionally, our students have the chance to participate in a variety of academic competitions that challenge and extend their intellectual growth.

At Bowning Public School, we are committed to providing a rich and varied HPGE experience that empowers gifted learners to thrive across all areas of their development, both within our school community and beyond.

Across NSW

Our students participate in a wide range of statewide programs to extend and enrich student potential.

The Premier’s Spelling Bee promotes our students’ vocabulary development and attention to detail in competitive settings.
The Premier’s Sporting Challenge (PSC) promotes whole-school participation in physical activity with leadership pathways and professional learning.
The Representative School Sport Pathway and PSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.