The Journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
and part-time early attendance of university; enrichment measures such as inner-school
competitions; and segregation measures such as special curricula, classes, or schools for gifted
students. Outside of school, the most important programs are pupils’ summer academies and
regional, national and international competitions.
Possible criteria are grades, school external achievement (such as success in school
external competitions), performance tests (usually IQ tests, but sometimes also measuring social and
creative abilities), questionnaires (to be filled out by the child itself or by third parties), parent
checklists, self- and other-nominations, as well as other, institutional "self-made" criteria (Mönks &
Pflüger, 2005). While the application of these criteria for different gifted education programs may
vary from country to country and, within each country, from state to state and from school to school,
the following identification and selection processes can be seen as typical for all three countries:
At the request of the parents, a child may enter school early, although the decision is usually
up to the school administration, sometimes under consideration of an expert’s opinion. From that
point on, excellent grades are a precondition for participation in most programs and activities within
school. An exception are inner-school competitions which are often open to any student who wants
to participate, but grades are rarely the only criterion. The decision to allow a student to share
classes with higher grades or skip a grade, for example, is typically based on high grades, apparent
motivation, and teacher nominations/recommendations. The results of an examination through a
school psychologist may also be included in the process (Mönks & Pflüger, 2005).
The decision to allow a student to attend a special track or class for gifted students, usually
offered only at the secondary school level, up to the school administration, is typically based upon
parents’ nomination/recommendation, the child’s performance in primary school, and an aptitude
test. The test chosen may vary from school to school, although they usually focus on intellectual
ability and the child’s successful participation in a trial lesson (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für
Unterricht und Kultus, 2010).
An example for schools for gifted children only is the Sir-Karl-Popper School in Austria, a
secondary school for gifted children. Their selection process works as follows: the young applicants,
having submitted their grades from primary school and a parental as well as a personal statement,
are subjected to a five-hour testing procedure which consists of two test batteries (the Advanced
Progressive Matrice Test and the Austrian version of the Intelligence Structure Test, 2000) and an
interview by an expert in gifted education (Sir-Karl-Popper-Schule, 2010). The Sir-Karl-Popper
School’s screening process was the most extensive, systematic, and objective screening process
found for any gifted education program in German-speaking countries.
The identification and selection criteria for gifted education programs outside of school are
similar to the ones employed for programs inside of school. When applying for participation in the
pupils’ summer academies, for example, a school’s or teacher’s recommendation and/or prior
successful participation in a students’ competition is considered sufficient proof of a student’s high
abilities (Deutsche Schülerakademie, 2010). There are usually no criteria that have to be met in order
to participate in a regional, national, or even international students’ competition. However, the fact
that a student has won such a competition is often taken as an identifying criteria for giftedness. The
students who win the German Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik, for example, a multi-stage, nationwide
student competition in mathematics, automatically receive a scholarship for their subsequent
university studies by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the prestigious German National
Merit Foundation (Bildung und Begabung e.V., 2010).
There is a large variety of procedures and tools used to identify and select gifted children.
The fact that every organization is free to set their own criteria, on one hand, means that every
organization has the freedom and flexibility to use the criteria that seem best suited to them. On the
other hand, a clear disadvantage is that this may lead to unsystematic procedures and the
employment of subjective and unreliable tools.
With a few exceptions, the criteria used in order to identify gifted students for participation
in gifted education programs seem to be rather conservative. Screening often relies merely on
excellent grades and teacher recommendations. This may bear the danger of overlooking children
who may not receive the best grades in their classes, but who have an exceptional creative talent or
any other "less conservative" talent.
In summary, there is a wide variety of identification and selection criteria such as grades,
school external achievement, performance tests to measure intellectual, social, and creative abilities,
questionnaires, parent checklists, self- and other-nominations, as well as other, institutional "selfmade"
criteria, which may be used in German-speaking countries to identify and select gifted
50 Gifted and Talented International – 26(1), August, 2011; and 26(2), December, 2011.