Jayne Dowle: Gifted children deserve the chance to excel

It is an interesting conundrum, especially as a recent academic

survey claims that only three per cent of young people recognisedas "gifted" in childhood appeared to fulfil their early promise in adult life.

How the eminent professor worked this one out, I'm not quite sure, as it is a notoriously subjective area. One person's shining success might be another's abject failure. But whatever sense it makes, it is one of those statistics that will stick in every parent's head. If your child excels at something, how can you help them to make the most of it?

What is clear is that the state school system has long been woefully inadequate at this. All too often, it caters to the lowest common denominator.

Teachers have such a hard time getting the class in order and delivering the basics of the curriculum, they simply don't have the opportunity to push those who have the ability to excel.

The old Gifted and Talented scheme was condemned for being too much of a "bolt-on". Rather than integrate challenging work into every-day lessons, it pulled high-achievers out and gave them extra lessons and support. You don't have to be gifted yourself to work out that in a busy school, when the going gets tough this kind of thing just doesn't happen. And you have to wonder who it actually benefited.

The Department of Education filling a quota, the school, or the child? Imagine being a super-bright child in a rough-and-tumble comprehensive, perhaps excelling at chemistry or maths.

The very last thing you want is to be singled out publicly as different or special. You might as well scrawl "bully me" on that child's forehead and throw him to the playground lions. And ultimately, teachers criticised the scheme for failing to reach the children who it could really help.

Instead of being a way to give bright children from poor backgrounds a leg-up, it turned into a middle-class competitive sport, with pushy parents vying to get their sons and daughters accepted into the club.

In effect, this was the absolute opposite of what it set out to do, which became the case with so many New Labour ideas, I could fill a column with them. But let's move on. If the new Government wants to come up with a better idea, perhaps they should talk to parents first. For 13 years, those in charge of dreaming up education policy seemed to assume that parents hated anything that smacked of elitism or privilege. The Gifted and Talented scheme paid lip service to giving bright children that extra chance, without actually coming straight out with it and bringing back grammar schools.

In reality, most parents are delighted if their children turn out to be bright or especially skilled in a certain area, even – and indeed, especially – parents whose own educational background is far from high-flying.

When Ministers talk about tackling the lack of social mobility which is sending Britain spiralling down in the world, this is where they have to look first. Prove to children that they can use their natural talents to move on through life, back them up every step of the way, and they will rise to the top, however tough the journey. Turning the whole thing into a bureaucratic tick-box exercise in which a child is either in or out on the basis of opinion defeats the object.

And this parent says that if a scheme like this is to work, it has to be consistent. Some schools appeared to operate Gifted and Talented in name only. For two years, not one of my son's class teachers even knew he played football seriously and had displayed a tremendous natural ability for the game from the age of four. He certainly doesn't get his talent from his mother. Every parents' evening, I would tell the teacher that the way to engage Jack in school – when he's not kicking a ball, he suffers from poor concentration – was through sport. And every parents' evening, my comments would be ignored. I think that sometimes, teachers just can't be bothered with the paperwork.

Now we've got a new headteacher, and so far, she seems intent on bringing out the best in every child. But this is one head, in one school. The challenge is to instil this in every school, from nursery onwards.

Apparently, 45 per cent of gifted children are recognised under the age of five. And then you have to tailor lessons to ensure that every child is as stretched as they can be. It is certainly a tall order, isn't it? But if our much vilified education system is to improve, recognising gifted and talented children should become a cornerstone of the classroom, not a compromise.