Sonnegg school building, first floor. Albert Einstein sticks his tongue out at the door of the Atelier Plus. "He explored time and space" is written under the pencil drawing. When you enter the room, you see eight white lab coats on a clothes rail. There are test tubes, funnels, bottles, pipettes and petri dishes on the laboratory table. At the back of the room is an aquarium. The student desks are arranged into four workstations. On them are laptops, microscopes and magnifying glasses. Highly gifted children are encouraged here in Atelier Plus. Every week, they leave their regular class one morning, put on their lab coats and become little researchers. The support programme has been running for ten years. It is a pioneering project.

08.01 a.m., the first pupils enter the room. Jonas, eleven years old, unpacks his Rubik's cube with the different coloured faces, turns, screws, turns, screws, pauses briefly - turns, screws. "I can solve it in 38 seconds. The world record is 4 seconds." Jonas wants to develop a new Rubik's Cube. "I'm going to combine the system of an older cube with the inner workings of the latest one." Recognising gifted children as such is the big challenge. Ten years ago, the premise was still valid: From an IQ of 130, a child was considered highly gifted. "We have long since moved away from this definition," says Victor Müller-Oppliger.

The Swiss expert on giftedness is head of the Master's degree programme in Gifted Education at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, where active teachers receive further training on the subject of giftedness. "The classic IQ test falls far too short. It narrows giftedness down to academic intelligence. However, there are also musical, creative, social and creative talents, for example, which cannot be measured using IQ tests," says Müller-Oppliger. The definition of giftedness currently recognised in science consists of various aspects: "Giftedness is defined as the ability to achieve high performance that stands out in comparison to peers through excellence, rarity, productivity, demonstrability and special value."

In Atelier Plus, Thomas Berset invites the pupils to the conference table. As an observer, you get the impression that the teacher is talking to a secondary school class and not to second to fifth-graders. "We're a bit decimated today. Minus three. One boy is ill, two are on a ski day." The morning conference begins and the children talk about the status
of their research. Nine-year-old Jeremiah is currently analysing the bodies of saltwater crabs. The little creatures are only a few millimetres long. Examining them requires patience and technical aids. Jeremia presents a greatly enlarged photo. "I discovered these little hairs here. We've never seen them before. We suspect that only the males have hairs like this at the end of their bodies." - "That would be exciting, of course," says Karol, 11, "that would be another feature for distinguishing the sexes. "

Not every Swiss school has such support programmes. But there are gifted children everywhere. Expert Victor Müller-Oppliger says: "We assume that 10 to 15 per cent of children have the potential to achieve more. And these children should definitely be supported." However, the promotion of gifted children in Switzerland is still not a matter of course. "It's grossly negligent that we don't take a better look. It's problematic for gifted children who don't feel understood and suffer. And it's a problem for the economy, because we're missing the opportunity to foster the talents that our society urgently needs to maintain its welfare."

In Atelier Plus, nine-year-old Noel has his say: "We asked ourselves: Can the saltwater crabs smell? We carried out an experiment in which we put eight crabs and algae food in a petri dish. Our assumption was that all eight would swim to the food. But that was not the case. We found out that the light had an influence. The saltwater crabs swim away from the sunlight." Noel is given the task of repeating the experiment with twice the experiment time. "The pupils should learn to think their way into other projects and offer constructive criticism. At the same time, the children learn to accept other ideas and put up with criticism.

Today it was still harmless in this respect," says Thomas Berset. Berset was originally a primary school teacher, later earned a doctorate in biology and worked in research for a long time. Why does he work at Atelier Plus? "I wanted to give gifted children the opportunity to discover scientific research. I also carry out learning research and develop learning materials. The gifted children are part of my research project, so to speak. If I have a new idea for a learning tool, I test it here with my pupils." Thomas Berset watches as Noel fishes eight saltwater crabs out of the aquarium with a pipette to later place them in the petri dish for his test. "I give them structures, but they have complete freedom within these structures," says the teacher.

Who gets to eat first? Who has the most rights in the group? The pupils have drawn up a questionnaire based on their findings. In future, pupils at the zoo will be able to access Karol's website via smartphone and thus use an interactive teaching tool. It is extremely important for the students that their research is product-orientated, says Thomas Berset: "You can't do research in a small room. Last year, for example, my students gave a big lecture at the University of Fribourg." But Berset himself also wants his lessons to generate products. His pupils' experiments repeatedly result in entire research kits for regular classes.

"For example, it takes a lot of effort to breed saltwater crabs for the whole class, which would be unreasonable for a teacher in a regular class. By distributing these projects, including descriptions and materials, to regular classes, they can also benefit from gifted education." But what exactly distinguishes gifted pupils from pupils in his regular class - apart from their high level of talent? "First and foremost, they are normal children. But what strikes me is that they are all extremely self-confident. I've never had a child say: I don't think I can do that now. What's more, they are all very interested. Once a pupil brought a bird's nest home from school. We then spent four hours examining it. Nobody said it was boring."

11.30 a.m., lessons are over, the children go home. Noel lives with his parents and brother in a detached house in Arth. Cornelia Hohl, Noel's mum, is in the kitchen. "Noel has always been very interested in all sorts of things. We had to explain a lot to him." Noel was always way ahead of the other children. Even before kindergarten, he could do maths and write or recite the alphabet. That was nice - and exhausting, adds Christoph Hohl: "Nicola, his little brother, is good at keeping himself occupied, whereas Noel finds it more difficult. "In addition, Noel has always been very sociable and approaches other people with confidence.

"When he was about five years old, he attended a taster afternoon of a movement and music course with a child from the village. He joined in straight away, while the other child just sat with his mum. At the end, Noel said he didn't like it that much and didn't want to go again. Even if not everything is 100 per cent right for him, he has no problem settling into a new group straight away."

Cornelia Hohl works as a flight attendant and is always at home for long periods of time. Christoph Hohl is a househusband and also runs a small trading company from home. Both of them therefore have time to encourage their son and quench his thirst for knowledge. Noel was assessed before starting school. The result: highly gifted. Noel has been going to Atelier Plus since the first grade. How did the environment react? "As far as Noel's giftedness is concerned, we've never had any negative experiences. We don't make a big deal out of it either," says Cornelia Hohl. Nevertheless, the Hohls want to give their son the best possible support. His father swotted up on maths with him at a high level or practised for tests in other subjects. "It's not as if Noel looks at things once and can do everything straight away. He may understand the connections better, but he also has to learn. Sometimes it's quite a grind," says Christoph Hohl.

It's important to keep at it, adds his wife: "If he doesn't learn to learn now, it will be difficult for him later." "Gifted children not only have to learn to learn, they also have to learn to fail," says Victor Müller-Oppliger. Sooner or later, even a highly gifted child will reach a point where they can't progress straight away. "At some point, high performance can only be achieved with hard work. This always includes failure. Only if a child is challenged at their level early enough will they learn that failure is part of the game." Can Noel still be a child at all? "Definitely, he doesn't need any encouragement to be a child. He loves sport or messing around, which is just what children do," says Cornelia Hohl. "But it's also important to us that he gets involved outside of school and meets children. In the choir or football." Noel, who has been listening so far, joins in: "In the last football match, our team won eight to one. I scored seven goals! "

Almost every school had special educational concepts with the aim of integrating pupils with learning disabilities or learning difficulties into mainstream classes. Our school also invested a lot of time and money in such a programme very early on - and still does today. But on the other side of the spectrum, there was nothing. For me, it is a question of equal opportunities that highly gifted children should also be offered a programme.

Never. Local politicians saw and still see this programme as part of our school's profile. And the costs are manageable. We have a budget of 12 million francs at our school. Atelier Plus costs us around 40,000 francs a year.

No, top-level support is still being neglected in Switzerland. There are gifted children everywhere, but they are not supported everywhere. In the municipality of Arth with the school sites in Arth and Goldau, we have around 900 primary school children. Over the years, there have been enough gifted children among them to run a support programme