When we talk about intellectually gifted children, the debate tends to focus on one of two questions: how we detect this characteristic, and why it doesn’t always translate into higher marks at school. While these are important questions, they overlook another equally important one: what can schools do once they know a student has to learn in a different way to other others?

Even when gifted students are identified, educators tend to offer an uninspiring response. They set more work, or more of the same kind of exercises, as if learning were a simple question of doing more. This is a very common mistake. Instead of increasing students’ burdens, we should be adjusting the level of the challenge itself.

Educators’ responses to gifted children are typically found at two extremes: inaction or overload. But properly adapted education doesn’t mean giving a child ten exercises where others do five. This only serves to make education repetitive and unstimulating.

If a student has already covered some of the planned content, teachers can reorganise their learning pathway and avoid unnecessary repetition. This frees up time in the school day that, instead of being filled with more of the same kinds of tasks, should be used for enrichment activities and a broader curriculum.

In practice, this means activities such as open problems, research projects, exploring links between disciplines, working on tasks with multiple solutions, critically analysing information, and creating their own outputs.

Read more: Gifted education programs don’t benefit Black students like they do white students

Javier Tourón, an internationally recognised Spanish expert in this field, points out that enrichment can take various forms: flexible groupings within the classroom, temporary breaks for specific activities, resource rooms, or complementary programmes. But these should always be based on pupils’ actual needs, not as a one-size-fits-all measure.

Don’t overburden, adapt

The question is not whether these pupils need special activities, but rather which curricular and methodological decisions........

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