The educational response to the most capable students in plans on attention to diversity

Abstract

Attention to diversity is a core principle of the Spanish educational system. It aims at meeting the needs of the students enrolled in its institutions. This diversity has helped to give visibility to high intellectual potential students as per their diagnosis and intervention. National regulations lay down the Plan on Attention to Diversity (PAD, by its Spanish initials) as the essential tool to plan, implement and assess the measures concerning attention to the diversity of the different groups, inter alia, the most capable students. By using the content analysis technique, this collaboration analyzes PADs from a sample of schools in the Spanish province of Palencia, in the autonomous region of Castile-Leon. It concludes that in certain plans, the presence of educational measures aimed at the most capable students is zero or a mere token and does not go beyond the regulations on which they are based, thus it becomes necessary to develop these plans in actual educational practice.