Adi Putra Abdul Ghani, the seven-year-old boy who attracted media attention last year for his mathematical prowess, is not in school anymore.

The Perak-born child prodigy is being home schooled after his parents felt his potential was not being met at the Islamic International School (IIS), where the boy was enrolled into last July. Adi Putra is currently preparing for his A-levels.

During question time in Parliament today, the Education Ministry reported that it currently does not have an education syllabus to deal with gifted children, many of whom went through school without being identified by authorities.

However, the Ministry's Parliamentary secretary, P.Komala Devi said a concept paper on a special programme for gifted children will be put forward in September.

The programme, called 'Program Pintar Cerdas', will be evaluated in 2009, before implementation in 2010, she said.

Adi Putra, whose father is a Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) technician and mother, a homemaker, gained media attention for being able to do mathematical divisions up to the trillions.

Early last year, SK Jalan Matang Buluh in Bagan Serai, Perak, faced public criticism after threatening to expel Adi Putra for not attending classes. Adi, who was placed in Year One, said he found the subjects boring.

He enrolled in IIS in July last year, where his favourite subjects included language courses in Mandarin, Japanese, English, Japanese, Arabic, French and Quran recital.

Counselling centre

Idris Haron (BN-Tangga Batu) expressed disappointment there was no special programme for Adi Putra.

However, he said he was "happy that Adi Putra has left the IIS as the school is not meeting up with his capabilities."

"I wonder if the ministry realises that at least two percent of our [population] is made up of gifted children, that translates to about half a million people. I'm glad that the ministry's acknowledges it currently does not have any programme to nurture such children," he said.

Idris proposed that the ministry also create a counselling centre for parents to assist the "culture shock" of having gifted children and that teachers be trained to identify these children.

The National Association for Gifted Children Malaysia (NAGCM) had last year called for the Education Ministry to provide for specific enrichment and/or acceleration for the intellectually gifted child.

NAGCM said the cluster schools concept, which gives autonomy to schools, could help gifted children realise their full potential.

State fund pledged

Last December, Terengganu Menteri Besar Idris Jusoh pledged that the state government would bear Adi Putra's educational expense.

"Adi Putra is a very intelligent child...he was not born for Terengganu or Malaysia but probably for the world," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.

Intellectual giftedness is identified as scoring at or above the 98th percentile on standardised intelligence tests.

Tests are usually based in Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores which, however, do not indicate gifts in some fields such as music or language.