Twins and multiple births

Which of the three situations you are in

The rule is narrow, and it is worth placing yourself accurately before you read any further, because the three cases below are not close to each other in strength.

One check before any of it. The narrow infant class size test applies only where the refusal was because admitting another child would breach the 30-pupil limit and there were no measures the school could take to avoid that without prejudicing efficient education or the efficient use of resources. That is paragraph 4.2 of the Appeals Code. If your refusal letter gives some other reason, your appeal is decided under the ordinary two-stage process at section 3 instead — a considerably more favourable test, because at its second stage the panel must weigh your children's circumstances.

The three grounds, the full excepted-pupil list and why the question above is the highest-value one you can ask: Infant class size

One admitted, one refused: how the argument runs

This is a first-stage argument and it is unusually clean, because it turns on two facts rather than on anybody's judgement about your family.

1. Your other child has been admitted. Established by the offer, and by your acceptance of it.
2. They were admitted otherwise than as an excepted pupil. Category (g) says so in terms, and this is the fact to check rather than assume. If the admitted twin was themselves an excepted pupil — for instance admitted outside the normal round with an Education, Health and Care plan naming the school, or after an appeal was upheld — then (g) does not apply and you need a different argument.

Ask the admission authority, in writing, on what basis the admitted twin was admitted, and whether they were treated as an excepted pupil under paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code. Paragraph 2.8 of the Appeals Code requires admission authorities to comply with reasonable requests from parents for information they need to prepare their case, and this is the information your case is made of.

With both facts established, the argument to the panel is short. Your child is an excepted pupil, excepted pupils do not count towards the limit, so admitting them would not breach it — and paragraph 4.6(a) of the Appeals Code is the first of the three grounds on which the panel may uphold an infant class size appeal: it finds that the admission of additional children would not breach the infant class size limit.

How long the exception lasts

The question every parent asks next. Paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code answers it in its opening lines: additional children may be admitted under limited exceptional circumstances, and these children will remain an "excepted pupil" for the time they are in an infant class or until the class numbers fall back to the current infant class size limit. So a child admitted into Reception under (g) is not removed at the end of the year. They stay excepted through the infant classes, and from Year 3 the limit stops applying to anybody.

Try to win it before the hearing

Nothing requires this to reach a panel. The admission authority can apply 2.16(g) itself, and some will once it is put to them plainly, because the rule is theirs to use and the appeal costs them a hearing. Write to them — to the admission authority for the school, which for an academy is the trust and for a community school is the council — setting out the two facts above and asking them to admit the second child as an excepted pupil under paragraph 2.16(g).

Lodge the appeal anyway, on the same day. Paragraph 2.1(a) of the Appeals Code gives you at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter, and an appeal you no longer need is withdrawn in a sentence. A deadline you let pass while waiting for a reply is not recoverable in the same way.

What you can require them to give you before the hearing, and why asking late is the commonest self-inflicted wound: Getting the information you need

Both refused: the harder case, and the honest version of it

This is what most people searching for this rule actually have, and it is important not to read the section above and assume it transfers. Category (g) needs a twin who has been admitted, and there is not one. Nothing in either Code creates an exception for a multiple birth where neither child was offered a place.

So you are in an ordinary infant class size appeal, on the other two gates at paragraph 4.6 of the Appeals Code:

• 4.6(b) — the arrangements were unlawful or wrongly applied and your children would have been offered places if they had not been. Both halves are needed. Check the other seven excepted-pupil categories at paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code while you are here: limb (c) covers children admitted after initial allocation because of a procedural error by the admission authority or local authority, which is the route that turns an ordinary mistake into an excepted pupil.
• 4.6(c) — the refusal was one no reasonable admission authority would have made. Paragraph 4.10 sets that threshold explicitly and it is very high: the panel must be satisfied the decision was "perverse in the light of the admission arrangements", beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker. A decision you think is harsh does not come close.

There is one genuine thing to check that is specific to your situation. Paragraph 1.8 of the Admissions Code requires admission arrangements to include an effective, clear, and fair tie-breaker to decide between two applications that cannot otherwise be separated. Twins are the paradigm case: on distance, on catchment, on a sibling criterion, two children from the same birth are usually inseparable on every criterion until the tie-breaker. Read what the published arrangements say the tie-breaker is, and read what actually happened. Some arrangements provide specifically for multiple births at the last place. Many do not, and neither Code requires them to — so check yours rather than assuming a national rule that does not exist.

If the arrangements do provide for it and it was not applied, that is a paragraph 4.6(b) argument and a good one. If they do not, arguing that they ought to is asking the panel to redesign the arrangements, which is not what it does — paragraph 4.5 requires it to refer any unlawful aspects of the arrangements to the local authority and the admission authority rather than to fix them itself.

One number worth establishing either way. The limit is 30 pupils per school teacher, and paragraph 4.11 of the Appeals Code adds that where a parent has deferred their child's entry the school is required to hold the place and panels must treat it as if it has already been taken up. So ask how many children are in the class, how many teachers it has, and how many of the places are being held for deferred entrants — the answers decide whether the limit is even engaged.

The 4.6(b) argument in full, and the second limb where most of them die: A mistake in how the decision was made

From Year 3 upwards, none of this applies

The infant class size limit is defined by the class, not by the school. Paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code keys it to classes where the majority of children will reach the age of 5, 6 or 7 during the school year, and paragraph 4.1 of the Appeals Code says the same. From Year 3 the limit is gone, the excepted-pupil list is irrelevant, and your appeal is an ordinary two-stage appeal under paragraphs 3.1 to 3.10.

That is better news than it sounds, because the ordinary process has a second stage and the infant class size process does not. Two arguments open up:

• The sibling criterion, at the first stage. Paragraph 1.11 of the Admissions Code requires admission authorities to state clearly in their arrangements what they mean by "sibling". A twin already on roll is a sibling under essentially every definition — but the point is that the definition is the school's own and it is published, so read it, then check where your child was ranked. If a sibling criterion existed and was not applied to your child, that is a paragraph 3.2(b) argument that the arrangements were not correctly applied, and under 3.5(a) the panel must uphold the appeal if that would have secured a place.
• The separation itself, at the second stage. Paragraph 3.8 requires the panel to take into account your reasons for preferring the school, including what that school can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot. With a twin already on roll, that comparison is unusually concrete and it is not a matter of preference: one school offers this child their sibling in the same building, a shared journey, the same term dates and the same school day. The other cannot offer any of it. Say it that way round — as what the preferred school provides — rather than as how difficult two school runs are for you.

How much sibling definitions vary, and what to check in yours: Siblings

How a second-stage case is built so it reads as consequence rather than preference: Medical and social need

What to do this week

In order. The first three take an afternoon and the rest depend on them.

• Accept the place that was offered, if one was. It is what makes paragraph 2.16(g) available, and accepting it costs you nothing you cannot give back later.
• Read the refusal letter for the reason. Paragraph 2.5 of the Appeals Code requires it to give one. Whether it says the infant class size limit decides which test your appeal is heard under, and paragraph 4.2 is why that matters more than anything else here.
• Ask, in writing, on what basis the admitted twin was admitted — and specifically whether they were treated as an excepted pupil. Paragraph 2.8 of the Appeals Code makes answering reasonable requests a duty.
• Put 2.16(g) to the admission authority directly, asking them to admit the second child as an excepted pupil without a hearing.
• Lodge the appeal the same day. at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter, under paragraph 2.1(a), and it is withdrawn in a sentence if you no longer need it.
• Ask for the class numbers. How many children are in the class, how many school teachers, how many places are held for deferred entrants under paragraph 4.11 of the Appeals Code, and how the excepted-pupil rules have been applied to the year group.
• Read the arrangements' tie-breaker. Paragraph 1.8 of the Admissions Code requires one; whether it says anything about multiple births is a local question with a published answer.
• Ask for both children to go on the waiting list. Paragraph 2.15 of the Admissions Code requires it to be kept until at least 31 December of the school year and re-ranked on the published criteria each time a child is added — never by when you applied. Paragraph 3.21 of the Appeals Code forbids the panel from taking any account of where you are on it, so the two routes cannot interfere with each other.

How to structure the statement so a panel can find the thing it has to decide: Writing your appeal statement

If you are appealing for two children, or for more than one school, the practical trade-offs are set out here: Appealing for more than one school

Being realistic about it

Across England 9.4% of infant class size appeals heard were upheld — 1,500 of 15,927 appeals heard in 2024–2026. That is a national figure covering every infant class size appeal heard in England, and it is low because the test is narrow rather than because parents argue badly. The Department for Education publishes appeal outcomes by council and by phase — primary, secondary and infant class size — and by nothing else, so there is no published success rate for multiple-birth appeals at any level, none for any individual school, and nothing here is a forecast about your case.

What can be said is where the argument on this page sits. The split case is one of the few situations in the whole infant class size regime where the Code gives a family a specific, checkable route through the limit rather than asking a panel to exercise a judgement it does not have. If your other child was admitted and was not an excepted pupil, make that argument clearly and make it first.

If both children were refused, be honest with yourself that you are in the ordinary infant class size appeal with the ordinary odds, and that the strongest thing you can do is the checking rather than the writing: the class numbers, the teacher count, the deferred places, the tie-breaker, and whether any of the other seven excepted-pupil categories fits. And keep both children on the waiting list, which needs no hearing and costs nothing.

Deadlines

Set by the admission authority, which must publish its appeals timetable by 28 February each year under paragraph 2.2 of the Appeals Code. Within that, the Code requires:

• at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter to lodge your appeal, in writing — paragraph 2.1(a)
• at least 10 school days' notice of the hearing — paragraph 2.1(b)
• appeals from the normal admissions round heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals — paragraph 2.3(a)
• in-year appeals heard within 30 school days of the appeal being lodged — paragraph 2.3(d)
• the decision letter within 5 school days of the hearing, wherever possible — paragraph 2.1(d)

Two things the admission authority owes you alongside those. It must not limit the grounds on which you can appeal (paragraph 2.5), and under paragraph 4.12 it must provide parents with information on the limited circumstances in which an infant class size appeal can be upheld. If you were sent that information and it did not mention the excepted-pupil categories, it did not do its job — and reading paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code for yourself is a better use of an hour than anything else on this list.

How school days are counted, which parents routinely get wrong over a holiday: Appeal deadlines and the timetable

The whole process from the refusal letter onwards, if this is your first one: How a school appeal works, start to finish

Paragraph numbers on this page are from the School Admission Appeals Code 2022 unless the page says "Admissions Code", in which case they are from the School Admissions Code 2021. The excepted-pupil categories are at paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code, multiple births at its category (g); the three grounds for upholding an infant class size appeal are at paragraph 4.6 of the Appeals Code and the reasonableness threshold at 4.10. Where this page says neither Code requires arrangements to keep twins together at the last place, that is a statement about the Codes' contents — many admission authorities do provide for it in their own arrangements, which is why the page tells you to read yours. Appeal statistics are Department for Education figures used under the Open Government Licence, published by council and phase with no breakdown by reason for refusal — how we source and calculate them.

The other grounds

• Infant class size Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are capped at 30 pupils per teacher by law. A panel can only overturn a refusal on three narrow grounds, and how much your child needs the place is not one of them.
• A mistake in how the decision was made The strongest ground there is, and the most underused. If the admission arrangements were unlawful or were applied wrongly — and you would have got a place otherwise — the panel must uphold the appeal.
• Distance and catchment How the distance was measured, from where to where, and whether the same method was used for everyone. Measurement disputes are first-stage arguments, and they are checkable in a way most grounds are not.
• Siblings Whether a brother or sister counts is decided by the school's own definition, not by common sense. Half-siblings, step-siblings, fostered children and a sibling in the sixth form are treated differently by different schools.
• Faith and religious criteria Faith schools rank applicants on evidence of practice — attendance records, a form signed by a minister, baptism dates. Most faith appeals turn on whether that evidence was gathered and scored the way the published arrangements say.
• Medical and social need The ground most parents lead with, and it is a second-stage argument almost every time. It works when it shows what this school can do for your child that the allocated school cannot — not how much you want it.
• Special educational needs without an EHC plan A child on SEN support has no automatic route to a named school, and it is an admission panel that hears the case — not the SEND Tribunal. It works as a second-stage argument about provision this school has and the allocated one does not.
• A late application Two first-stage questions a panel can act on: whether it was right to treat your application as late at all, and whether your reason for being late is one the published arrangements say must be accepted anyway.
• In-year admissions Applying outside the normal round — a house move, or a school that is not working out. The ordinary two-stage test applies on a much shorter timetable, and the year group will usually already be full.
• Grammar schools and the 11-plus A selection appeal and an oversubscription appeal are different things judged on different tests. If your child missed the qualifying score, the panel is asking whether they are of the required academic standard — not whether the school has room.
• Sixth form places Post-16 admission runs on published entry requirements as well as oversubscription criteria, and the student gains a right of appeal of their own alongside their parents'. Where the refusal was about grades, the panel may not form its own view of the student's ability.