KEY POINTS:
Sadia Motawaze has gone from the bottom to the top at school with amazing speed.
The 14-year-old, who came to New Zealand unable to speak English as a refugee from Afghanistan about seven years ago, started at Kelston Girls' College in one of the lowest streamed classes last year - only to come top of all the school's Year 9 students by the end.
Sadia is now in the special "high motivation" Year 10 class and part of the school's programme for gifted and talented students, which was acknowledged yesterday by education officials for its success in a multicultural setting as part of the release of a national good-practice study.
"She's done extraordinarily well, she's very focused and obviously she's a really intelligent young woman," said principal Linda Fox.
For Sadia, the challenge of extra lessons in the gifted programme keeps her interested. "At intermediate, I didn't really go to school that often," she said. "The schoolwork was kind of easy."
A highlight for the teenager - who aims to become a doctor - was a trip to the Liggins Institute at University of Auckland and being selected for the prestigious research centre's school holiday programme.
"It's really nice," said Sadia.
Students are put forward for the decile-4 college's gifted and talented programme by parents or teachers, then tested and interviewed.
Ms Fox said a new non-verbal reasoning test to be introduced this year would help the school identify gifted students from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
"You really are guessing when students come in and they just do not have English as a first language," she said. "For some of the students who come in, because of their circumstances overseas they've had no education - so [we've had] no way of measuring their natural ability."
The Education Review Office study released yesterday said the programme helped students discover hidden talents.
