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Excellence is an important theme in education. Since 2008, the Platform Bèta Techniek has been providing extra stimulation for excellence in higher education through the Sirius Programme. Since 2011, excellence has also become part of the policy agendas for primary and secondary education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW).
In 2012, the School aan Zet programme was launched for schools in primary and secondary education. Within School aan Zet, schools work on their own ambitions on various themes. One of these themes is excellence and giftedness. The need arose among schools and stakeholders in the predecessors of School aan Zet (Bèta Excellent and 100-school trajectory) to gain insight into which students are considered excellent or gifted learners, what the educational trajectory of these students looks like, and where these students are generally located.
To answer this question – who are the excellent students? - Dialogic conducted research on excellence in education. This has resulted in a trilogy of publications that will be released by the end of this year: part 1 focuses on the best-performing students in primary education (part 1a) and how this group develops in secondary education (part 1b). Part 2 focuses on the top 20% best-performing students in pre-university education. Lastly, part 3 provides insight into a pilot study where excellent students from secondary education were tracked in higher education.
Utrecht: December 2012