Just to clarify, I have done as much research as possible without contacting the school. They do mention they try to cater to gifted kids within the class environment through differentiation using teacher aides, they prefer not to use pull out programs, however they will assess each child on their own needs. They generally assess each child after 6 weeks and go from there.
We've heard this before, and it turned out to be BS. In-class differentiation is typically not a workable solution for a child who is one or more years ahead of their age peers. You can't realistically expect a teacher's aide to be designing individually appropriate curriculum for 20 different children.
In NZ it's a legal requirement for gifted students to be given an appropriate education (although obviously that doesn't mean much really)
Same for us in my US state. We tried many approaches with the school in advocating for our DD. The inappropriate educational environment was causing DD a lot of emotional problems, so we talked about that. It was causing her a lot of social problems, and we talked about that. None of that gained any traction with the school.
When we locked into a theme of what an appropriate education for DD looked like, we finally started getting some results. For instance, "It is not appropriate for a first grader reading at a 5th-grade level to be limited to first-grade books" gained her access to higher level library books. Because those words were loaded with legal implications, doors started opening. That's something you might want to keep in your back pocket in case their approach to differentiation does turn out to be BS.
