Schools admissions process 'badly letting down' multiple birth children - new campaign launched

TAMBA has launched a campaign to stop twins being sent to different schools - saying this traumatises children and places an enormous burden on the parents.

They are calling for the schools admission code to be changed to recognise the needs of families with twins, triplets or more. They are also calling for appeals committees to be given training to be made more aware of those needs.

Tamba says multiple birth families encounter a range of problems when applying for primary school places which appear to be exacerbated by maximum class size legislation.

This year they have dealt with appeals across 12 different local authorities and a third of these were on the grounds that children had been offered separate places at different schools. They say these appeals created great stress for families.

"None of these families could understand how the admissions process could let them down so badly," says Tamba chief exec Keith Reed.

He adds: "Some parents are forced to split their multiple birth children across different schools, which can have an adverse impact on their social, emotional and educational development – as well as presenting serious logistical difficulties as most school days start at a similar time and these parents are faced with the problem of how to safely deliver two or more young children to different schools.

"Alternatively, in order to keep their children together, families to have to accept places at a non preference school a considerable distance from home which is also difficult."

Research by the charity shows that the educational and developmental needs of multiple birth children during their early school years is different to those who don't have a twin brother or sister. They are more likely to be premature and have slower speech development, or they may have 'extreme dependence' on their sibling. All of these factors can have an impact if twins are asked to go to different schools.

Case studies included in Tamba's report include:

East Anglia: Twins had settled happily in the village school. No place was available for younger sister. The family was forced to uproot the twins in order for the three children to attend the same school – some distance away. The family took the case to appeal, which failed.

North West England: One place was offered for the twins. The parents were left to decide which twin to give the place to. A place for the other twin hung upon another family moving out of the neighbourhood. The family were reduced to watching the football transfer lists in order to find out whether the other family were about to move Clearly this led to stress and uncertainty for the whole family.