Inclusion is a relevant issue in most education systems nowadays. Inclusive education should provide high quality education for all students. In terms of funding and public initiatives that target towards inclusion, however, gifted students are not usually the main target group (Borders et al., 2014). Yet, not only disadvantaged students should receive support, but also particularly gifted students should be given the opportunity to further develop their talents (Vötsch & Schneider, 2023). Promoting excellence in VET is an important agenda on the European level. This includes the provision of “high-quality education and training that values diverse backgrounds and talents, while ensuring relevance to the world of work” (ETF, 2025) as well as identifying gifted students who require intensified special support but might be overlooked when searching for solutions in harnessing human talent.

In Austria, the first initiatives to support gifted students started in the 1980s as segregated measures predominantly in secondary education. In 2009, the Austrian Ministry of Education issued the 'Basic Decree on the Promotion of Gifted and Talented Children', which requires inclusive support for gifted students throughout the school system. Over the past few decades, there have been various developments aimed at broadening the opportunities available to gifted students in the Austrian education system. These developments have included improvements to the legal framework, organisation and structure, as well as linguistic enhancements to legal documents. Several stakeholders are involved in the support of gifted students, including schools, business representatives, municipalities and higher education institutions (Resch & Rogl, 2024). Kuusisto et al. (2021) point out that gifted students have been somehow neglected within the Finnish education system. According to their analysis, supporting gifted students seems to be largely dependent on the initiatives of individual teachers, schools and parents. The ongoing discussion about the gifted education tends to revolve around basic and general upper-secondary education leaving the VET system out. Hence, the talent within the VET students or the practices supporting them remain mostly hidden, even when there is a variety of existing structures and processes for fostering the gifted within the VET.  For example, several measures that target towards individualisation and acceleration have the potential to support gifted students in VET (Hong, 2025).

Subotnik et al. (2011, p. 7) observe that numerous definitions and terms are employed in gifted education research. Accordingly, the authors formulated a comprehensive definition, which can be employed across diverse academic domains, as it includes a wide range of aspects that are the subject of scientific consensus:

Giftedness is the manifestation of performance or production that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to that of other high-functioning individuals in that domain. Further, giftedness can be viewed as developmental, in that in the beginning stages, potential is the key variable; in later stages, achievement is the measure of giftedness; and in fully developed talents, eminence is the basis on which this label is granted. Psychosocial variables play an essential role in the manifestation of giftedness at every developmental stage. Both cognitive and psychosocial variables are malleable and need to be deliberately cultivated.

In our study, we want to shed a light on policies that support gifted students in the Austrian and Finish VET system.

Therefore, the following research questions are discussed in the presentation:

• Which strategies are used to support gifted students in the VET-system in Austria and in Finland?
• What are the similarities and what are the differences in strategies supporting gifted students in the field of VET between Austria and Finland?

The international comparison of policies in VET is regarded as a pertinent task of VET research (Chen et al., 2021). Therefore, this paper is based on a cross-border collaboration project between Austria and Finland. The purpose of this project is to analyse the parallels and differences between strategies employed to provide support for gifted students within the respective VET systems. We concentrated on VET in Austria and Finland because both countries offer an apprenticeship system as well as vocational colleges. This helps to compare the measures to support gifted individuals and provides the potential to benefit from strategies offered by the other system. The aim of comparative VET research is to identify an overarching theme and to highlight and compare the different ways of dealing with it (Schmid, 2020). In our study we focus on a hermeneutic approach which is characterised by interpreting texts which in our case are legal documents and recommendations (Lauterbach & Mitter,1998) in the context of VET in Finland and Austria that include strategies that can support gifted students. As a starting point, strategies that fall into the two most commonly used approaches when supporting gifted students according to Subotnik et al. (2011), enrichment and acceleration, were identified. In addition, our analysis also sheds a light on policies that might not be explicitly targeted towards gifted students but still can have the potential to support excellent students in their educational pathway. The strategies we are comparing are aimed at students in VET programmes at the upper secondary level. In Austria, this includes three- to four-year school-based VET programmes (ISCED 354, EQF 4), five-year school-based VET programmes (ISCED 354–554, EQF 5) and apprenticeships (ISCED 354, EQF 4) (Cedefop & ibw Austria, 2023). In Finland the focus of the research is on the 180 ECT upper secondary Vocational education and training (VET) qualification programmes (Finnish National Education Classification, codes 321-329) (ISCED 354, EQF 4), that can be carried out both in a school-based approach, as apprenticeships or as a combination according to the individualised development plan (PDP) of each student.

We expect that some measures identified in Austria and Finland appear similar at first glance. However, we also expect notable differences in how they are labelled and how they are described and applied in detail. The we will documents examine in this study do not reveal how consistently these measures are applied in the daily practice of VET teachers, nor do they show how approaches differ between individual institutions in supporting gifted students. This highlights the need for further comparative empirical research on gifted education. Existing models in the field of talent development as for example the ‘Developmental model of professional and vocational excellence’ (Nokelainen, 2018) indicate that supporting gifted students is a complex and multifaceted task. While our study focuses specifically on measures implemented within schools, it is important to acknowledge that external influences such as the support of parents, the encouragement of peers, and opportunities provided by the workplace also play a significant role in supporting gifted students. Future research could expand on this by examining how these external factors contribute to the development of gifted students in different contexts. Such research could involve conducting interviews with representatives from companies that have established initiatives to identify and nurture talent, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of the multiple dimensions involved in talent development.

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