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 Millers Forest Public School, we proudly follow the NSW Department of Education’s High Potential and Gifted Education (HPGE) policy, which values the varied strengths and needs of gifted and high potential students. Our commitment is to create an inclusive and supportive learning environment that challenges and extends all students, ensuring they remain engaged, motivated, and able to achieve their fullest potential. Our programs are carefully designed to identify and foster giftedness across multiple areas, reflecting the Department’s holistic approach to nurturing the whole child. By recognising giftedness in a broad and inclusive way, we seek to promote excellence not only academically but also creatively, physically, and socially, preparing students for lifelong achievement and wellbeing.

Our approach is centred around four key domains:

Creative Domain: We encourage students to develop innovative thinking and creative expression through a variety of artistic and problem-solving activities that nurture originality.

Intellectual Domain: We provide enriched learning opportunities that challenge students to engage in higher-order thinking, deep inquiry, and advanced curriculum concepts.

Physical Domain: Understanding the importance of physical development, we support students in improving their coordination, fitness, and physical skills via targeted activities and sporting programs.

Social-Emotional Domain: We prioritise the social and emotional wellbeing of our gifted students, helping them build resilience, self-awareness, and positive relationships to thrive in our school community.

At Millers Forest Public School, we are dedicated to applying the NSW Department of Education’s HPGE policy through a comprehensive, student-focused approach that nurtures the potential of every learner across these four important 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 Millers Forest Public School, we use a variety of differentiated teaching strategies to meet the diverse needs of all our students, including those who are high potential and gifted. Our approaches include:

Implementing flexible groupings across the school to meet students where they are at academically and provide challenge and support to every learner.
Designing lessons and tasks that vary in pace, complexity, and encourage higher-order thinking.
Using ongoing formative assessments to track student progress and tailor learning experiences.
Offering differentiated physical activities that focus on skill development and confidence in PDHPE.
Creating supportive classroom environments that encourage exploration and self-reflection.
Providing opportunities for students to take on leadership roles within the classroom.
Facilitating structured peer collaboration and reflective learning.

Across our school

At Millers Forest Public School, we offer a variety of extra-curricular activities that extend and enrich student learning. These include targeted programs for selected students as well as opportunities to join whole group activities and incursions.

Our offerings include:

STEM and coding opportunities
Academic competitions including Public Speaking and Spelling Bee
Sport teams, PSSA sport, training, coaching
Wellbeing programs
Dance groups
Whole school play and dance performance

As proud members of the Gateway Learning Community, we participate in the Gateway APEX Program (Advancing Potential and Exploring Excellence). This program provides valuable opportunities for our students to develop their talents across all HPGE domains, based on identification through school processes. Gateway APEX delivers a range of activities within our local schools addressing each domain:

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

Millers Forest Public School's is involved in APEX events including the Gateway Games interschool sporting program, offering students the chance to participate in netball, soccer, touch football, softball, and cricket alongside other schools. We also run a variety of school-based initiatives focused on nurturing student talents.

Across NSW

At Millers Forest Public School, we actively engage in a variety of statewide opportunities to support and enrich our students’ learning experiences. We strive to respond to student interests and incorporate their voices when selecting these programs. Currently, our school participates in:

The Premier’s Spelling Bee
A range of Primary School Sports Association (PSSA) competitions, including teams in netball and soccer.
The Premier's Sporting Challenge