Inspire - High potential and gifted education
At Anna Bay Public School, we proudly align our practices with the NSW Department of Education’s Inspire – High potential and gifted education (HPGE) policy, which recognises the diverse strengths and learning needs of high potential and gifted students. We are committed to providing an inclusive and supportive learning environment that challenges and extends all learners, ensuring they remain engaged, motivated and able to reach their full potential. Our programs are designed to identify and nurture advanced abilities across multiple domains, reflecting the Department’s focus on supporting the whole child. By embracing a broad understanding of giftedness, we foster excellence not only in academic learning, but also in creative, physical and social development, preparing students for lifelong wellbeing and success.
Our approach supports four key domains:
- Creative Domain: We offer opportunities for students to develop innovative thinking and artistic expression, encouraging originality, imagination and problem-solving through diverse creative activities.
- Intellectual Domain: We provide enriched learning experiences that promote higher-order thinking, deep inquiry and advanced understanding across subject areas.
- Physical Domain: We recognise the importance of physical growth and skill development, supporting students to strengthen coordination, health and physical abilities through targeted programs and sporting activities.
- Social-Emotional Domain: We prioritise student wellbeing, building resilience, self-awareness and positive relationships to help gifted learners thrive socially and emotionally within our school community.
At Anna Bay Public School, we are dedicated to implementing the NSW Department of Education’s HPGE policy through a comprehensive, student-centred approach. We aim to recognise, extend and celebrate every learner’s potential across these four domains, ensuring all students are empowered to achieve success.
Why choose us for your high potential or gifted child?
At Anna Bay Public School, we are passionate about recognising and nurturing the unique talents and abilities of every student. Aligned with the NSW Department of Education’s Inspire - High potential and gifted education (HPGE) Policy, we provide an inclusive and stimulating learning environment designed to support students with high potential across intellectual, creative, social-emotional, and physical areas.
We celebrate each learner’s individual strengths and offer a wide range of opportunities to identify, support, and challenge high potential and gifted students from an early stage. Through personalised teaching approaches, enrichment programs, and targeted support, we empower our students to achieve their highest potential and thrive both academically and personally.
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?
Inspire - 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.
At Anna Bay Public School, high potential and gifted education (HPGE) is a core part of our daily teaching and learning. We recognise that many students demonstrate advanced abilities, and we are committed to nurturing these talents so they can develop into meaningful and lifelong achievements.
Teachers identify individual learning needs in the classroom and use evidence-based strategies to extend and challenge students at their point of readiness. A range of learning pathways are available, including enrichment opportunities and extension activities. Students may be identified by teachers, with input from families encouraged, as having high potential or giftedness in the cognitive, creative, physical or social-emotional domains. This information is shared across the school to ensure consistent support for every learner.
- Differentiated tasks that adjust pace, complexity and higher order thinking.
- Formative assessment to monitor growth and adapt learning.
- Advanced learning pathways, including accelerated or compacted content.
- Explicit teaching of critical thinking and problem-solving strategies.
- Opportunities for abstraction, inquiry, and curriculum depth.
- Tasks that promote choice, authenticity, and critical and creative thinking including cross-curricular projects.
- Flexible grouping for collaborative ideation and presentation.
- Differentiated movement tasks and skill refinement in PDHPE.
- Targeted learning goals for coordination, agility, and control.
- Opportunities to take on lead roles in physical demonstrations or team strategy.
- Supportive learning environments that enable exploration and self-assessment.
- Strengths-based feedback and goal setting.
- Opportunities for leadership within the classroom.
- Structured peer collaboration and reflection.
- Safe learning environments that encourage confidence, risk-taking, and perseverance.
- Podcasting
- Debating
- Gardening
- Academic competitions
- Drama
- Screenprinting
- Painting
- Film by the water film creation
- Critical thinking workshops
- Creative arts/ dance showcase
- Creative writing groups
- Sport teams
- Student leadership (SRC)
- Junior AECG
- Wellbeing programs
- Participation in whole-school inclusion and wellbeing initiatives
- Culture Program
- Gathang language lessons
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Math's
- 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 and CHSSA events enable our students to trial and compete in sports at regional, state and national levels, fostering discipline, commitment and collaboration.
- The Premier’s Spelling Bee promotes our students’ vocabulary development and attention to detail in competitive settings.
Help for your high potential child
If your child shows signs of high potential, contact us. We can share how our HPGE support can guide their learning journey.
Student opportunities and activities
Discover the opportunities our students have at our school.
Learning
Find out about our approach to learning and supporting students to progress