Science & Education

Today’s learners don’t just bring backpacks into classrooms; they bring the emotional weight of a world that rarely gives them room to breathe. They arrive overstimulated, distracted and carrying silent expectations they never asked for: to keep up, fit in, impress, perform and be “okay.” Their attention is

Bullying remains one of the most significant and under-addressed threats to learner well-being. Defined as repeated, intentional harm within a power imbalance, bullying creates a climate of fear that affects children emotionally, socially and academically. Global data from UNICEF and the World Health Organisation show that roughly one in three

There is a quiet crisis in South Africa: gifted children falling through the cracks because so few people truly understand what giftedness looks like. We tend to imagine giftedness as perfect grades and calm confidence. We picture a child who intuitively excels at everything. Meanwhile, real gifted children are often

Every year around this time, Grade 9 learners sit down with subject lists and a knot in their stomach. We tell them the right combination will unlock the future — but for many, it isn’t the subjects that break them. It’s the system itself: one that prizes exams over

Every few months, someone warns of the “tidal wave of neurodiverse diagnoses” — as if we’ve all caught ADHD like the flu. The implication is that difference has become fashionable, that acronyms are the new accessories. Relax. The wave didn’t arrive. We finally turned around and faced the ocean.

by Kate La Trobe MSc, BCBA and Nicola Killops, Educator and Gifted & Twice-Exceptional Specialist We were those kids: bright, talkative, imaginative, distracted. The ones teachers described as “full of potential if they’d just apply themselves.” We did apply ourselves — just not to what made sense to other people’