High potential and gifted education

Some students learn faster and more easily than others. These students may shine in creativity, thinking, leadership or sport.

At our school, we recognise and nurture these strengths early. We support advanced learners with great lessons and activities to help them grow and thrive.

At Woodberry Public School, we are proud to align our approach with the NSW Department of Education’s High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE) policy, which recognises the diverse strengths and needs of gifted and high potential students. We are committed to providing an inclusive and supportive learning environment that challenges and extends all learners, ensuring they are engaged, motivated, and able to reach their full potential. Our programs are designed to identify and nurture giftedness across multiple domains, reflecting the Department’s emphasis on catering to the whole child. By embracing a broad view of giftedness, we aim to foster excellence not only academically but also creatively, physically, and socially, preparing students for lifelong success and wellbeing.

Our approach focuses on four key domains:

Creative Domain: We provide opportunities for students to develop innovative thinking and artistic expression, encouraging originality and problem-solving through diverse creative activities.
Intellectual Domain: We challenge students with enriched learning experiences that promote higher-order thinking, deep inquiry, and advanced knowledge across the curriculum.
Physical Domain: Recognising the importance of physical development, we support students in enhancing their coordination, health, and physical skills through targeted activities and sports.
Social-Emotional Domain: We prioritise the emotional wellbeing and social development of gifted students, fostering resilience, self-awareness, and positive relationships to help them thrive within our school community.

At Woodberry Public School, we are dedicated to implementing the NSW Department of Education’s HPGE policy by providing a comprehensive, student-centred approach that nurtures the potential of every learner across these four domains.

Why choose us for your high potential or gifted child?

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

At WPS, we engage in a range of differentiated teaching practices to support the needs of ALL students, including High Potential and Gifted students. These include the following:

Differentiated tasks that adjust pace, complexity and higher-order thinking.
Formative assessment to monitor growth and adapt learning.
Flexible grouping for collaborative ideation and presentation.
Differentiated movement tasks and skill refinement in PDHPE.
Supportive learning environments that enable exploration and self-assessment.
Opportunities for leadership within the classroom.
Structured peer collaboration and reflection.

Through identification processes and in partnership with families, we also offer advanced learning pathways. This can include access to higher level curriculum, or acceleration to higher level classes.

Across our school

We offer a range of extra-curricular activities that students can access to build on their learning. These include targeted programs with selected students, and opportunities to participate in whole group activities and incursions.

These include:

STEM and coding clubs.
Academic competitions.
Creative writing groups.
Sport squads.
Wellbeing programs.
Dance groups.

As proud members of the Gateway Learning Community we participate in the Gateway APEX Program (Advancing Potential and Exploring Excellence). The purpose of the program is to provide local opportunities for our students across all HPGE domains to develop their talent which has been identified through school processes. Gateway APEX provides a range of programs across our local schools which cover each domain, as follows:

Creative Horizons (Creative)
Gateway Games (Physical)
Heartfelt Connections (Social/Emotional)
Mind Quest (Intellectual)

In 2025 examples of our APEX events include a Gateway Games interschool sporting program to bring schools together to engage in a variety of sports, including netball, soccer, touch football, softball, and cricket, a Creative Horizons ceramics initiative, and a range of school based initiatives for student talent development.

Across NSW

At our school we participate in a range of State wide opportunities for our students. We aim to be responsive to student need and incorporate student voice into our choices. We currently participate in the following:

The Premier’s Spelling Bee promotes our students’ vocabulary development and attention to detail in competitive settings.
A range of Primary School Sports Association (PSSA) sport competitions including teams in netball, rugby league, touch football and soccer.
Participation in the regional Star Struck dance performance every two years.