The Early ’90s – A Philosophy of Inclusion
The Gifted Children’s Association of BC was energized in the early 1990s by the education ministry’s decision to support the philosophy of inclusion of students designated as Special Needs. This was taken as a signal that all designated students would be receiving enhanced support.
In those days the language of inclusion was ‘integration’ and the intent was to include all learners in regular classroom settings, closing special education classes and programs. To support this move, many additional Education Assistants were trained and hired and specially trained teachers employed in schools as Resource Teachers to support integration. In addition, in recognition of the additional supports special education students needed, a system of reporting identified students and receiving additional grants to provide services was instituted.
Many of us who worked in schools and supported families with gifted children wondered how this would serve our students. While we could readily see the benefits for students in other categories of need who had been grouped together by designation so that specific types of instruction could be offered efficiently, we wondered how this would benefit gifted students.
Best practice in supporting the gifted category of special need includes having the opportunity to work with like-minded peers as well as providing a learning environment that offered the breadth, depth and pace for learning that these students needed. If classrooms and programs that gathered these like-minded learners together disappeared, how would that optimum environment and support survive in a very mixed ability class?
However, the special education grants allowed districts to identify students and claim funding that provided for an array of supports and assignment of teachers with gifted special education backgrounds to work with and support identified students.
2002 – Changes in Funding
That changed in 2002 when the ministry removed targeted funding to four categories of special needs students, including gifted. That very quickly shut off the lifeblood for gifted resources and supports as the targeted funding had been required to be spent on services for students who were designated. Districts also largely stopped assessing and designating students as gifted as what would be the point if there was no funding?
… the ministry removed targeted funding …
Fewer and fewer students were designated as gifted and fewer teachers acquired the knowledge and experience to identify and respond to their needs, resulting in a precipitous drop in the number of gifted students identified in BC in the past 15 years.
From 18,372, or 2.6% of total BC students, in the 1999-2000 school year, the number of students designated as gifted slumped to just 5,469, or 0.8% province-wide, in 2017/2018.
