Concerns and Issues Relating to the Education of Talented Girls (A New South Wales perspective)

Abstract

This paper is not concerned with a description and analysis of programs for talented girls, rather the intention is to focus on a series of issues which affect the educational opportunities of all females and have implications for the success of talented girls. Few women in Australian society realise their intellectual and creative potential. The factors which prohibit this actualisation are common to the talented and ‘mainstreamer’. Until these problems of educational disadvantage are broached and appropriate strategies devised to ameliorate the malaise of female under-achievement in general, then the specific difficulties encountered by the talented female will remain unaddressed. Formal recognition at a National and State level of the special needs of girls is relatively recent. However, concern for the talented has a longer history, commencing in N.S.W. in the 1930's with the establishment of opportunity classes at a primary level, the setting up of selective single-sex high schools (1930–42) and ability streaming of students in comprehensive schools. Few of these early strategies to develop the potential and ensure the post-schooling success of girls were successful. Other factors were at work; gender stereotyping of roles, a sex differentiated curriculum and limitations placed on access to various career paths. Although initiatives are in place to counter these restrictions, many of these factors still inhibit girls from realising their talents and potential. These are the issues investigated in this paper with emphasis on the N.S.W. experience.