In August 2023, Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu was named a recipient of the SUSS Excellence in Teaching Award — one of Singapore's most respected honours for educators in continuing and professional education. It was not an award she had campaigned for. It came, as the most meaningful recognitions do, as the quiet result of years of work done well and done honestly.
But this is not simply a story about an award. It is a story about what happens when the right kind of educator gets the recognition they deserve — and why that recognition matters enormously for the families and children who need them most.
SUSS Excellence in Teaching Award · 2023
Awarded by the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), Centre for Continuing and Professional Education. Presented at the Faculty Appreciation Event on 19 August 2023 at Swissôtel The Stamford, Singapore — in recognition of outstanding contribution to quality education and exceptional commitment to student learning.
Who Is Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu?
Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu holds a doctorate and has spent over two and a half decades working at the intersection of psychology and education — specifically with children whose intellectual profiles do not fit neatly into standard classroom expectations. She is a psychologist, a cognitive assessment specialist, the author of The Secret to Raising a Smarter Child, and the Co-Founder of GiftedKids.in.
Her work begins where most educational conversations stop. Parents come to her not because their child is failing, but because their child is different — brighter than the curriculum allows for, more intense than teachers have language for, and often deeply misunderstood by the very systems meant to support them. Dr Inderbir's role is to translate that difference into something parents and educators can act on.
She has done this work quietly, in assessment rooms and parent consultations, in workshops and training sessions, for more than twenty-five years. The SUSS award is the moment the institution formally agreed: this work matters, and this educator does it exceptionally well.
Why This Award Matters — For Dr Inderbir and for Gifted Education
When an educator working in the field of gifted and twice-exceptional children receives formal recognition from a respected university, it is not just a personal milestone. It sends a signal that ripples outward — to parents, to schools, to policymakers, and most importantly, to the children themselves.
Institutional Credibility
The SUSS ETA is peer-reviewed and institution-backed. It tells schools, hospitals, and government bodies that Dr Inderbir's approach to gifted education is not just effective in her own room — it meets the highest standards of professional practice.
A Voice Parents Can Trust
Parents of gifted children often fight to be believed. When their child's psychologist holds a teaching excellence award from a national university, that fight becomes easier. The credential opens doors — in schools, in clinics, in IEP meetings.
Elevating the Field
Gifted education in Asia is chronically under-resourced and under-recognised. Every award in this space signals to institutions that investing in specialised expertise pays off — and makes it more likely that more educators will be trained and supported.
Validation of a Different Pedagogy
Dr Inderbir does not teach to standardised outcomes. She teaches to the individual child — their profile, their strengths, their asynchrony. This award validates that approach at the highest level: differentiated, assessment-led, child-centred education works.
The Gap This Work Fills
Gifted children are among the most misunderstood learners in any education system. They are frequently mistaken for disruptive, for overambitious, for socially immature, or for simply difficult. Their needs are invisible precisely because their intelligence can mask the depth of their struggle. A bright child who is bored is too often described as lazy. A gifted child with sensory sensitivities is too often labelled as behavioural.
"A gifted child who is bored is described as lazy. A gifted child with sensory sensitivities is labelled as behavioural. The problem is never the child. The problem is the absence of an adult who knows how to look."— Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu, GiftedKids.in
This is the gap Dr Inderbir has spent her career filling. Her assessment work goes beyond IQ scores. She looks at cognitive profiles — at the relationship between verbal reasoning, working memory, processing speed, and spatial ability. She looks at asynchronous development: the eight-year-old who reads at sixteen but still cannot regulate their emotions at eight. She looks at twice-exceptionality — the child who is both gifted and dyslexic, or gifted and autistic, or gifted and anxious.
These are children the standard system rarely serves well. And the educators who can serve them well are rare. The SUSS award says, clearly, that Dr Inderbir is one of them.
The Evening It Was Presented
The award was presented at the SUSS Faculty Appreciation Event, held on 19 August 2023 at Swissôtel The Stamford — one of Singapore's landmark venues. The evening brought together educators from across SUSS's faculties and professional centres, celebrating a year of teaching that had made a difference to students' lives.
The SUSS Faculty Appreciation Event, Swissôtel The Stamford, 19 August 2023.
Read the official SUSS campus update →
Dr Inderbir was recognised alongside colleagues from the School of Business, the School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences — making her recognition from the Centre for Continuing and Professional Education particularly notable. Continuing education is the area where gifted adult learners, parents seeking professional development, and specialist educators intersect — exactly the audience her work serves.
Dr Inderbir at the SUSS Faculty Appreciation Event — a community that celebrates educators who go beyond the standard.
View the full list of SUSS Teaching Award Recipients →
The Certificate — and What It Represents
The physical certificate, awarded in recognition of "outstanding contribution to quality education," is more than a document. It is institutional permission — permission to speak with authority, to be cited, to be trusted, to be invited into conversations about gifted education at a level that informal expertise alone rarely achieves.
The SUSS Excellence in Teaching Award 2023 certificate, awarded in recognition of outstanding contribution to quality education.
SUSS Award Recipients — official page →
For gifted education specifically, this credentialing effect is significant. Parents fighting for appropriate school placements, for cognitive assessments to be taken seriously, for IEP accommodations to reflect their child's actual profile — they are helped enormously when the professional supporting them holds an award of this calibre.
The 2023 ETA Recipients
Dr Inderbir was one of five educators honoured with the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2023. The selection process at SUSS involves peer nomination and institutional review — it is not a self-applied award.
| Recipient | Faculty / Centre |
|---|---|
| Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu | Centre for Continuing & Professional Education |
| Assoc. Prof. Lim Hwee Seng | School of Business |
| Dr Lim Wee Kiak | School of Business |
| Dr Ow Yong Jit Liang | School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences |
| Dr Siti Hajar Ali | School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences |
Source: SUSS Teaching Award Recipients (official) →
What the Award Means for GiftedKids.in
Dr Inderbir co-founded GiftedKids.in as a platform for the parents, teachers, and professionals who are trying to understand giftedness not as a label but as a lived reality — with its joys, its intensities, its asynchronies, and its very specific needs.
The SUSS award strengthens that platform in tangible ways. It means the articles, assessments, and parent resources on GiftedKids.in come from an educator whose teaching has been formally validated by a national institution. It means that when a parent shares a GiftedKids.in article with their child's school, they are sharing content backed by a recognised expert — not just a practitioner with an opinion.
What Award-Backed Expertise Means in Practice
A parent in Singapore visits her child's school to advocate for a different learning approach. She has spent months on GiftedKids.in, reading about asynchronous development and twice-exceptionality. She brings a cognitive assessment report signed by Dr Inderbir.
The school receives that report differently now. Not because the science changed. Not because the child changed. But because the educator behind the report holds an Excellence in Teaching Award from a respected national university. The credential creates a door where there was previously a wall.
This is why recognition in gifted education is not vanity. It is advocacy infrastructure. It is the thing that turns good information into accepted guidance.
The Ceremony on Video
SUSS recorded the Faculty Appreciation Event in full. The video below captures the evening — the warmth of the room, the colleagues, the moment of recognition. It is a rare window into what institutional appreciation of teaching actually looks like.
SUSS Faculty Appreciation Event 2023 — official recording. Watch on YouTube →
Why Credentialled Gifted Educators Are Rare — and Why That Matters
There are very few psychologists and educators who combine deep clinical expertise in gifted assessment with formal recognition for teaching excellence. Most gifted education advocates are strong practitioners or strong communicators — rarely both, and rarely with institutional backing at the level SUSS represents.
Dr Inderbir bridges that gap. She brings the rigour of a psychologist, the warmth of a teacher, the clarity of an author, and now the standing of an award-winning educator. That combination is what makes her work at GiftedKids.in more than a resource — it makes it a reference point.
"Gifted children deserve adults who are not just caring but credentialled — who can walk into any room and be taken seriously. That is what this award helps make possible."— On the significance of the SUSS Excellence in Teaching Award 2023
A Note to Parents and Educators Reading This
If you have found GiftedKids.in because you have a child who confuses you — who is simultaneously brilliant and struggling, advanced and asynchronous, intense and misunderstood — you are in the right place.
The person who built this platform knows what it is to sit with those children year after year, and to have fought for them through assessment reports, school conversations, and hours of careful, specialised work. The SUSS award is one institution's confirmation that this work meets the highest standard.
The children in your life deserve that standard. And so do you.
Dr Inderbir Kaur Sandhu is a psychologist, gifted education specialist, and the Co-Founder of GiftedKids.in. She holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge and has spent over two decades working with gifted and twice-exceptional children across Singapore and beyond. She is the author of The Secret to Raising a Smarter Child and a recipient of the SUSS Excellence in Teaching Award 2023. Her work spans cognitive assessment, talent development, and helping families understand children who learn differently.