The word 'gifted' might have a certain stigma around it but for one of the teachers at Southland's only school catering for gifted children, it's a word that needs to 

be normalised.

Enrich@ILT teacher Marlene Campbell says it's important to let children who have been determined as being gifted know that they are special and that they should freely embrace their abilities.

"I think the more we use it, the less [stigma] that would be. I think it's fine to say they've been identified as being gifted. It's interesting that it's a social dilemma for people and parents even ask 'so should we be telling them they're gifted?' And we're like 'yes, you should'."

Mrs Campbell helped found Enrich@ILT 10 years ago after seeing gifted children struggle to get specialist education to suit their particular requirements.

"For me I always felt that the really abled children, or specifically gifted and talented children, didn't get a good deal out of that specialist education funding and there just never was enough of it," she said.

Through a funding initiative by the Invercargill Licensing Trust (ILT), Mrs Campbell was able to put the idea together that would help embrace Invercargill's gifted students and go towards creating "a city of educational excellence".

Enrich@ILT students (from left) Nelan Ault (10), Fletcher McDowell (9) and Kaley Evans (10) are developing their gifted abilities during their one day a week at the school. PHOTO: Ben Waterworth

ILT provides around $400,000 of funding a year to the school Mrs Campbell said.

The Invercargill-based school allows children to attend one day a week where they are taught to embrace their abilities and be around other children who have similar requirements to them.

Schools help identify students they feel fall under the gifted spectrum, and a series of tests are then undertaken to determine if they are or not.

Nine-year-old Fletcher McDowell said attending the school had taught him more about what being gifted means, while also being able to make friends with like-minded people who he felt were able to "understand" him more.

Ten-year-old student Nelana Auld agreed, saying it had also given her an opportunity to make more friends.

"This is way better than school in my opinion," she said, "and it has more options. It's the best day of the week and it's good because then you've got something to really look forward to in your week, other than school. It's just school. Enrich is a lot better. You have more opportunities to show what you're gifted at and what you can do."

Mrs Campbell said the change in students from the beginning of the year to the end of year was huge.

"It transforms some lives completely from arriving quite confused and lacking confidence and you can kind of see the confusion rolling around in their head. They're like 'I don't know what Enrich is, I don't know why I'm here'... and once they come to understand that some of their quirky little sensitivities are because they are falling on that gifted emotional development they start to understand themselves. And their self-confidence just booms."