The existing policy was reviewed by Catherine Wormald, a specialist in gifted education, to bring Canberra up to international best practice standards.

''It's a rough ballpark figure that 10 per cent of the population is gifted,'' Dr Wormald said.

The challenge of gifted and talented programs is to turn those innate abilities, or gifts - be it in a particular academic subject, humanities, sport or leadership - into talents.

''A talent is the development of these gifts … if Ian Thorpe wasn't given the opportunities, the catalyst to develop his swimming gift into a talent, then he would still be gifted, but he wouldn't be talented.''

The ACT received more than 70 submissions in a public consultation on upgrading the policy, which will also require schools to offer professional development to teachers in providing gifted and talented education.

''There's always room for improvement to update from what the latest research is,'' Dr Wormald said.

Research shows grouping gifted students together is the ideal, but the policy allows for flexibility for schools to do that as their resources allow, whether it is to tailor individual learning plans, group students together within classes or subjects or accelerate students.

''There's been a lot of research come out of the United States in acceleration and the benefits of that, and I think in Australia we have been slow to actually pick up on acceleration, but the policy has very clear guidelines to support parents and teachers in how students can be accelerated.

''Some students get accelerated with no support. It doesn't always work, so you need to see each student reviewed. It could be just as disastrous for a student being accelerated as for a student not being accelerated.''

The liaison officer will be the point of contact for the education directorate to keep schools up to date on best practice.

At Calwell Primary School, teachers tailor activities to individual student abilities, and continually assess the progress of children to ensure their needs are being met. ''One of the real beauties of our system is there is flexibility, and it's always about the partnership with the parents,'' school principal Linda Neeson said.

''It's about not being stuck in one model … it's constantly reviewing where are they at and what can we do to enhance their learning.'' Dr Wormald said constant review was integral in order to identify gifted kids ''as early as possible''.

''Everybody develops at different rates, so, where you might have a student in kindergarten who's not showing those signs, a couple of years down the track they might be.''