The Ministry of Education’s new focus on gifted learners gives me hope. As a former SENCo and mum to a child who hasn’t always had the right support at school, it also leaves me with questions.
New resources are already available, and a national programme is due to begin in January 2027. It covers gifted learners more broadly, including those who also have additional learning needs. Some delivery details are still being developed, so we don’t yet know exactly what the support will look like in every school.
For me, the real question is, will it help us recognise the children whose abilities and struggles don’t fit neatly into the picture we expect?
The child who can explain complex ideas but struggles to get them onto paper. The child whose results look average, despite flashes of brilliance. The child who achieves highly but finds the school day exhausting.
These are some of the children we risk overlooking when we assume that giftedness will always be obvious.
When strengths and support needs hide one another
Twice exceptional, or 2e, learners are gifted in one or more areas and also have a disability or additional learning needs. Their strengths can conceal their difficulties, while their difficulties can conceal their strengths. Sometimes the result is a child who appears to be doing “well enough”, while neither part of their learning profile is properly recognised.
When ability and achievement tell different stories
One learner’s experience has particularly shaped my understanding of twice-exceptionality. I’m sharing a shortened account here, with identifying details omitted to protect their privacy.
At home, this child showed considerable ability. At school, their achievement didn’t reflect what their family saw. They seemed disengaged, frequently needed to move, and often lost break time to finish work.
Over time, their anxiety around learning increased and their confidence fell. By the time they began a period of home education, formal maths teaching felt so overwhelming that they could initially manage only short sessions.
Home education proved transformative. It created space to move away from the pressure of keeping up and work out what this child actually needed. There was time to revisit foundational learning, identify gaps and fill them without embarrassment or comparison with classmates.
Just as importantly, it was a chance to rebuild confidence and self-esteem. The focus wasn’t simply on completing more work. It was on helping a child who had come to doubt themselves experience success and begin to trust their own ability again.
That period laid important foundations for their eventual return to school, stronger underlying skills, renewed confidence and a growing sense that learning could be something they enjoyed rather than endured.
A return to school brought another turning point, a teacher who recognised that this learner needed both movement and greater academic challenge. Building on the progress made during home education, access to more advanced maths and a responsive classroom approach helped them flourish further.
Unfortunately, that understanding wasn’t consistent across school transitions. When the support changed, their confidence and achievement declined again.
After lots of advocacy, a learning-support lead took time to listen to the family, look beyond previous results and consider the learner’s strengths alongside their needs. Thoughtful class placement and opportunities to study at a higher level made a considerable difference.
Academically the learner began thriving. But strong results didn’t mean school had become easy.
Noise, transitions and changes to routines still took their toll. Support was helpful, but how it was offered mattered too, particularly when the learner wanted privacy rather than attention drawn to their differences.
What stays with me is that progress wasn’t simply about finding harder work or returning to a classroom. The period of home education had been crucial in rebuilding the foundations - academic, emotional and personal. Later success built on that work, alongside the understanding and adjustments offered by individual educators.
This learner needed gaps in their knowledge addressed without their ability being underestimated. They needed academic challenge without their support needs being dismissed. They also needed opportunities to feel capable again, not just to demonstrate what they could achieve. We shouldn’t have to wait for achievement to collapse before taking a child’s difficulties seriously and we shouldn’t assume that a child who needs help in one area cannot be exceptionally capable in another.
Families and schools may be seeing different parts of the same child
As a parent, advocating can be exhausting.
There is the email you hesitate to send because you have already sent so many that you know your name in the in-box, is likely received with an eye roll at best. The meeting you know you need to request. The phone call you worry might come. The tears and tantrums as your child lets off steam where they feel safest.
But there are also the people whose kindness and understanding you never forget. That one person in school that the child feels is safe. The one who really sees them and accomodates for them in the moment it’s needed. The one who understands them and will bend the rules to support their emotional needs.
I know educators are often working within significant constraints. I’ve been on that side of the conversation too. This isn’t about assuming that parents understand everything and teachers understand nothing, or the other way round.
It is about recognising that we see children in different settings.
The new gifted-learning resources describe parents and whānau as active partners in identification and provision. That partnership matters.
When a family describes abilities or distress that aren’t visible at school, I would like our starting point to be curiosity.
“What might explain the difference between what we’re seeing?”
The child’s own perspective belongs in that conversation too. What do they find difficult? When do they feel capable? Which adjustments help, and which make them feel singled out?
Support needs to be something we work out with a learner, not simply something we arrange around them and these conversations need time.
Understanding behaviour doesn’t mean ignoring its impact
Some behaviour is unsafe, other children need protection, and staff need support.
In an early SENCo role, I worked with a Year 5 boy who had developed a reputation for bullying and disruptive behaviour, including throwing chairs He spent a great deal of time out of the classroom.
But we also needed to understand what was happening.
I began recording when incidents occurred and what had happened beforehand. A pattern emerged around tasks involving reading aloud and writing.
Further investigation revealed substantial unmet reading and writing needs.
After around six weeks of targeted support, he was writing stories that stretched across several pages, using phonetic spelling. More importantly, he was spending all of his time learning in the classroom, and we saw far fewer incidents affecting other children.
That experience has stayed with me.
It wasn’t evidence that every behaviour has one simple explanation, or that a short intervention will resolve every difficulty. It showed me the value of looking beyond a child’s reputation and investigating the demands they were struggling to meet.
Understanding a behaviour does not mean accepting harm. It means combining clear boundaries with a response that addresses what is contributing to it.
We also need to notice the children who don’t disrupt
Some children make their difficulties impossible to miss. Others become very skilled at keeping them out of sight.
I am particularly concerned about girls whose needs may be overlooked because they don’t match familiar expectations of neurodivergence. There is increasing recognition that ND can be under recognised in girls and women. Some reports suggest that they may be less likely to be referred and more likely to receive an incorrect alternative diagnosis.
That doesn’t mean anxiety is always “really ADHD”, or that every quiet, perfectionistic child is neurodivergent. It means we need to remain open to a fuller picture rather than stopping at the first explanation.
The same applies to giftedness. Strong achievement doesn’t rule out additional needs, and difficulties with literacy, attention or organisation don’t rule out exceptional ability.
We need to notice more than disruption and ask more than whether a child is keeping up.
Assessment support shouldn’t become another hurdle
If we’re looking at this holistically, we also need to clear up the confusion some parents have experienced around Special Assessment Conditions, or SAC, for NCEA.
In our experience, there was initially uncertainty about whether more than one type of support could be requested. Resolving that meant another phone call and another email.
Schools can actually request provisions based on a student’s needs and supporting evidence, and NZQA may approve all or some of those requests. Students can also use different support for different assessments. For me, the issue is how clearly those arrangements are understood and communicated.
Families shouldn’t need to become experts in assessment administration to help their child access appropriate support. Equally, the staff coordinating it need clear guidance and opportunities to resolve uncertainty.
What I hope this programme will change
I welcome the new focus. But the real test will be whether these resources translate into meaningful improvements in children’s everyday experiences.
I’d like to see educators getting robust training and ongoing support to identify twice-exceptional learners. This isn’t always straightforward. It takes curiosity and a willingness to revisit our assumptions when a learner’s strengths or difficulties don’t look the way we expect.
Teachers also need practical support to adapt their teaching so that additional needs are met without placing a ceiling on academic challenge. That includes access to specialist knowledge and subject expertise when a learner needs extension beyond a teacher’s usual curriculum or experience. I’d welcome stronger collaboration between primary schools, intermediates, secondary schools and universities, not only to provide greater challenge, but to make sure understanding and effective support aren’t lost when a learner moves on.
Partnership with parents, whānau and learners themselves needs to sit at the heart of this. We need clear guidance on how that partnership will work in practice, alongside the time and resources to make it meaningful. Teachers are already carrying substantial workloads; this cannot simply become another expectation without the support to deliver it.
We also need to recognise that giftedness and additional needs won’t look the same in every learner. For me, avoiding an ableist approach means not treating differences in communication, movement, literacy or sensory needs as evidence of limited potential. It also means involving twice-exceptional people in shaping the support intended for them, rather than making decisions on their behalf.
I also want to see how this work connects with attendance expectations. My concern is that attendance conversations could focus too heavily on getting a child through the gate without enough attention to what makes being there manageable.
The question I would like us to ask is: “What needs to change so this learner feels safe to attend, can participate and sustain it?”
I would also like clarity about the expertise schools will be able to access. Understanding giftedness matters. So does understanding disability, neurodivergence, cultural context and the ways one part of a learner’s profile can obscure another.
Above all, I want to see real attention to wellbeing, belonging and the learner’s own goals, not just achievement.
Teachers need support, not another thing to get right alone
The educators who make the greatest differences aren’t people who have every answer.
They listen. They are willing to reconsider an assumption. They notice ability without dismissing difficulties, and they make practical changes.
That is the kind of work I want to support, observing learners, identifying needs, exploring uneven learning profiles, examining the demands behind behaviour, collaborating with families and schools to turn understanding into workable classroom responses.
Not another checklist. Not another reason for teachers to feel they are falling short.
Time to think together, examine real situations and develop responses that respect both the learner and the realities of teaching.
