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National registry, early identification, and specialized care become part of an unprecedented policy for students with high abilities or giftedness, in a scenario where official records still show only part of this group in Brazilian schools.
Brazil now has a national policy aimed at identifying, monitoring, and serving students with high abilities or giftedness, a group already included in special education but still not very visible in official school records.
Sanctioned on June 18, 2026, Law 15.436/2026 created the National Registry of Students with High Abilities or Giftedness and defined guidelines to organize this service in the Brazilian educational system.
The new policy aims to address a long-standing gap in the country’s education, as students with quick reasoning, high creativity, great interest in specific areas, or above-average performance may go years without proper recognition.
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When this identification does not occur, many students follow the same school path as their peers, even when they need content deepening, acceleration in certain areas, or other pedagogical strategies compatible with their learning pace.
Official data shows challenge of identification
Official data helps to measure the challenge faced by education networks in the face of this still underidentified group in Brazilian schools.
According to the 2025 Basic Education School Census, released by Inep, the country recorded 56,238 enrollments of students with high abilities or giftedness in special education.
Although it indicates progress compared to previous years, this number still does not show how many students with this profile remain unidentified in public and private education networks.
Created by the new legislation, the national registry is expected to gather information about already identified students, based on educational screening, specialized evaluation, and multidimensional monitoring throughout the school trajectory.
With this database, education systems will be able to plan actions, monitor trajectories, and offer services compatible with each student’s needs, without relying solely on isolated initiatives from schools, families, or specialized professionals.
What changes with Law 15.436/2026
According to the Casa Civil, the policy seeks to promote early identification, ensure specialized educational support, and enhance conditions for the comprehensive development of these students within the educational networks.
In addition to registration, the law provides for the training of education professionals and strengthening of support structures, points considered important to reduce misinterpretations about the behavior of gifted students.
In practice, giftedness does not always appear as high grades in all subjects, early mastery of school content, or uniform performance in all academic routine activities.
The same student may show exceptional performance in mathematics, language, music, technology, arts, sciences, or problem-solving, while maintaining common performance in other areas of school life.
This variation helps explain why some of these students remain invisible to teachers, families, and educational networks for many years.
Children who finish activities quickly, question rules, show boredom with repetitive exercises, or concentrate interest in very specific topics may be seen only as inattentive, restless, or poorly adapted to the classroom.
Giftedness goes beyond high grades
The national policy seeks to broaden this perspective by treating the identification of high abilities as a process that goes beyond elevated school performance.
Instead of associating giftedness only with above-average report cards, the law recognizes the need to observe creativity, engagement with tasks, learning pace, intense interest, and above-average ability in one or more areas.
Among the strategies provided are curricular enrichment, partial acceleration in specific components, and full acceleration of the school trajectory, always according to the profile and needs of each student.
These measures allow for deepening content, advancing in a specific area, or reducing stages of education, provided there is adequate evaluation and pedagogical indication for this type of adaptation.
Reference centers can support schools and families
Another point provided in the legislation is the possibility of creating specialized reference centers to support students, families, and professionals involved in educational support.
These structures can particularly assist networks that do not yet have teams prepared to recognize, evaluate, and monitor cases of high abilities or giftedness.
With technical support, identification tends to no longer depend solely on the perception of a single teacher or the persistent initiative of the family.
Monitoring involves pedagogical guidance, specialized evaluation, and more consistent decisions about the necessary adaptations for the development of each student.
The adherence of states, the Federal District, and municipalities will be voluntary, through an agreement signed with the federal government.
When there is adherence, the Union may offer technical and financial support to implement the planned actions, provided there is budget availability.
Application depends on educational networks
This model makes the execution of the policy dependent on the participation of local networks, responsible for a large part of the direct service to basic education students.
For this reason, the reach of the law should vary according to each education system’s capacity to train professionals, record information, and create specialized service strategies.
The legislation also reinforces that specialized educational service must consider different levels, stages, and modalities of education, respecting the moment when the potential is observed or recognized.
Not every child shows evident signs in the early school years, and some students are only identified after longer periods of observation, evaluation, and monitoring.
For families, the creation of a national policy can facilitate dialogue with schools and educational networks about specific pedagogical needs.
With its own regulation, it becomes clearer that students with high abilities or giftedness have the right to proper identification, monitoring, and proposals compatible with their learning pace.
Even so, the creation of the registry alone does not solve the problem of under-identification, nor does it guarantee that all students with this profile will be quickly found.
The effectiveness of the policy will depend on the quality of the records, the training of professionals, the offer of specialized educational service, and the schools’ ability to recognize that high potential does not always appear obviously.
The School Census already confirms the presence of this group in educational networks, but the available data still do not reveal the full extent of students who may be outside the statistics.
With the new policy, the country will have a national structure to seek these students more methodically, instead of waiting for them to be recognized only when they stand out exceptionally.
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