Starting school is a big milestone for your children and for you. Twins Trust has developed a school admissions pack to help you choose the most appropriate school for you and your children.

School admissions pack

The school admissions pack is full of resources to help you to maximise the chances of obtaining places in the school or schools of your choice. We want to help make that big step a little easier by ensuring that the school or schools you choose give you a say in how your children are taught and if there is more than one reception class, in whether they are taught together or apart. 

I’m thinking about delaying my childrens’ entry to school

It may be that you don’t think your multiples are ready for school: delays with language, walking, development of gross and fine motor skills and toilet training are all features regularly encountered in multiple birth children. If you think that deferring your child’s/childrens’ place would be in their best interests, we have information to help you through the process. 

The Department of Education advice on the admission of summer born children is also worth a read for those who are thinking about delaying or deferring their starting year. Maggie Dorsman, one of our honorary consultants, has kindly put together this information on Part Time Attendance, Deferring and Delaying School Start to help families in this situation.

If your babies were born prematurely Bliss have an excellent page regarding delaying/deferring school entry that you may also find useful.

Are we likely to be offered different schools for our multiples?

Due to many years of campaigning by Twins Trust it’s now very rare that multiple birth siblings are offered places in different schools. Multiple birth children are now included in the schools admissions code as ‘excepted children’ - children who may be admitted to school even if this exceeds the 30 infant class size limit. 

What if one (or more) of my children has an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP)?

If one of your multiples has an EHCP which guarantees admission to a particular school, you must let the Local Authority (LA) School Admissions Team know this, as the Special Educational Needs (SEN) service will deal with the application of the child with the EHCP while the admissions service will deal with the application(s) for the other multiple(s).

It can happen that twins or triplets in this situation will be allocated to different schools. If you wish to avoid this, you might consider making an application for just one school for all your multiples using social and medical grounds to argue that this is the only suitable school. It is best to seek advice from your LA admissions service in this case.

Preparing for school

To help you prepare them and you for that first day at school we’ve developed lots of tips and resources. 

Make sure you have a note of school application deadline dates in your diary. Primary school applications in England for starting in September open in November, and the deadline for applications is 15th January. School placement decisions for primary schools are announced in April. If you don’t receive the school of your choice, you could consider appealing (hyper link to schools appeals) the decision about the allocated school for your twins or triplets.

Best of luck to you and your children for their next big adventure. If you take a snap of their first day at school, we’d love to see it via our social media channels. Oh and while we’re on the subject of the first day of school, don’t forget to pop a tissue or two in your pocket in case you have one of those watery eye moments.