Policy and Practice: A Twenty Year Retrospective on Gifted Education in the Australian State of New South Wales

Abstract

If schools are looking to make opportunities real for gifted and talented students, implementation of policy needs to be prioritised and made routine on a system-wide and a school-wide basis. This paper analyses implementation initiatives as they have occurred over the time span of twenty years from the inception of the New South Wales Department of Education and Training policy for gifted education through the first revision and now through the second revision. It considers the correspondence of policy recommendations with actual school provisions. Such information is of assistance in further policy (re)formulation and in further implementation.