Abstract:

The National Project to Identify Gifted Students was established in 2010 as a joint educational project of Ministry of Education, King Abdulaziz & his Companions Foundation For Giftedness & Creativity “Mawhiba”, and the National Center for Assessment in Higher Education “Qiyas”. The project is aimed at students in third through twelfth grades in both public and private schools in Saudi Arabia with two main objectives: to identify potentially gifted and talented students in science and technology as well as building up a national database of high ability students which can be used in the future by any concerned educational institute.
During the first phase of the project, sixteen regions of the total forty five regions in Saudi Arabia participated and the project targeted the top 2.5% of their students in grades 3, 6, and 9. According to the Saudi Ministry of Education (2010), there are approximately one million student enrolled in the target grades in the 16 participating regions. Out of this number, 43,118 students were nominated for the first phase of the project (2010-2011). Hence, nearly 4% of the total population were nominated with an increase of almost 1.5% of what was originally planned. Three methods of nomination were available where the student can be nominated by his/her teacher or his/her parent or by him/herself. The various aspects of the nomination process, including test registration, were conducted online through a portal system, which was developed as part of the project. Nominated students were offered an aptitude test developed for the project. The test contains five sub-dimensions ranging from verbal reasoning, mathematical reasoning, scientific reasoning, spatial reasoning, to mental flexibility. Based on final test scores, 6,937 students were identified as potentially gifted students. Around fifty five percent of the accepted students were male students (3,815) and around forty five percent were female students (3,122) . These students who were identified as potentially gifted students were offered various enrichment programs, such as Ministry of Education enrichment programs, Mawhiba summer enrichment programs, and Mawhiba- school partnership Initiative.

Keywords:

Gifted education, reform in education, national projects.