There is an extraordinary concentration of multiple births in this classroom. Apart from the Hill children - three girls and a boy - there are a pair of identical twin boys, John and David Devine. And class teacher Sue Caldwell is a triplet. If she wasn’t, Naomi, Katherine and Charlotte Hill might well be wearing name badges. As it is, one has bunches, one a ponytail and one a plait and they have slightly different patterns on the toes of their black buckled shoes - because 26-year-old Sue still remembers vividly what she experienced as the humiliation of wearing a name badge at school. “I didn’t understand why other people couldn’t tell my sisters and myself apart,” she says. “To us, we were three individuals. Nobody else had to wear a badge. So why did we?”

With one in every 40 children in this country born a twin, and increasing numbers of twins and “super-twins” (more than two) born as a result of fertility treatment, most teachers will sooner or later find two or three identical or similar faces gazing back at them out of the class. Some multiple-birth children have special educational or social needs. But how much do teachers know about how to give them the appropriate help?

Pat Preedy, headteacher at Knowle C of E Infants School in Solihull, developed an expertise on twins after noticing in 1992 that the school had nine sets of twins starting in reception, making a total of 10 in the whole school. She began with a Twins and Multiple Births Association (TAMBA) training day, and is now doing a PhD thesis on twins and multiples starting school. “People sometimes assume that because they’ve got each other to play with, they’re fine,” she says. “I think teachers need to be aware particularly that language may be a difficulty.”

After having to share their mothers’ eye contact, attention and conversation, twins are often slower to speak than singletons. Competition for attention at home may have got them into the habit of speaking very loudly, or shouting to make themselves heard. Some are still speaking in shorter sentences than their peers and using more baby language by the time they arrive at school.

An Australian study carried out by La Trobe University found that twins’ early experiences may be crucial to their development. Twin pregnancies rarely go beyond 37 weeks, and many multiple-born children arrive even more prematurely. Twins are not only lighter and smaller at birth but also more likely to have complications and need special care. “These factors need to be considered, ” say the authors, “especially when twins are delayed in fine-motor as well as in language skills.”

Although most twins go through school without any particular difficulty, certain factors can make them more vulnerable to problems. With boys usually slower than girls at language development, and twins usually slower than singletons, twin boys are at a double disadvantage. Being identical also makes problems more likely, found the La Trobe authors. But they emphasise that while children with “one or more of these characteristics are more likely to have speech and language problems, the majority will not”.

To separate twins or not is the first major decision most schools will have to make. It’s the classic dilemma of twinships, and one which is brought into sharp focus when children start school. “The best policy is no policy,” says Dr Elizabeth Bryan, medical director of the Multiple Births Foundation. “Schools and teachers should respond to the needs of individual cases rather than having blanket rules.”

But how do schools decide what is best for the children? “If they are a family who’ve got no close relatives,” says Pat Preedy, “who haven’t had playgroup or nursery experience, and where the children haven’t had an opportunity to be apart, you may question whether starting school is the right time for separation. On the other hand, you might have a set where one twin is particularly dominant, even to the point of always speaking for the other. It may be that that pair needs the opportunity to be separated.”

Teachers should be aware that if such a pair is split up, the dominant child can suffer as much as the passive. But flexibility is also useful. If separation - or togetherness - doesn’t work out, schools should be ready to think again.

Schools with a two-form entry and a pair of twins at least have the option of separating them. But single-entry schools, or double ones with a triplet family, may not have the choice. When teacher Eileen Smith had five-year-old triplet girls starting, she decided, with the parents, that to split the three girls into the two classes the school had available would not help. These particular girls were fiercely competitive with each other - a feature of some multiple-birth children.

Instead, she tried to give the girls room for separate development within one classroom. “I tried to plan the lessons so they could do different things, and there was less room for comparison,” she says. “They desperately needed individual attention and I strived all I could to give them that. But if you have twins or triplets in the class, you have to make sure that you’re not mesmerised by them, that you remember the needs of the other children.”

Many parents report difficulty finding school places for their multiple-born children, with a perception on the part of schools and other parents that they are somehow getting more than their fair share. When head John Griffiths admitted the four Hill children into the school’s nursery, he dispensed with one-sixth of the available places. And this in a nursery that he says he could “fill twice over”.

“I made a conscious decision,” he says, “to give them the opportunity to be there with other children. It could have caused problems, but I spoke to governors and parents and most said they understood.”

In Sue Caldwell’s class, the identical twins have given more cause for concern than the non-identical quadruplets. The two boys were initially reluctant to be apart at all; if one went to the lavatory, so did the other. When one was off school with chicken pox, the other stayed at home too. Sue Caldwell, after discussion with the boys’ parents, started splitting them up for a few minutes at a time and they now sit quite happily at separate tables while working. But given the chance, they’re still not averse to copying each other’s work, or even writing in each other’s books.

When the class recently played a circle game of whispering a name round a group, David stood up when John’s name reached him. “They didn’t seem bothered which it was,” says Sue Caldwell.

The boys’ mother, Jackie Devine, 33, has nothing but praise for the progress they have made since starting school. “When they were about 2 and 3,” she says, “they just wanted each other. They seemed a bit lazy with words and they’d finish each other’s sentences. But since they started at school and got confident, they each seem to have their own personalities.”

With only a freckle between them (John has one on each side of his nose, David on only one side), Sue Caldwell is often hard-pressed to know which child is which, particularly from the back or from a distance. “I always feel awful if I get the name wrong,” she says. “As if I’ve let them down because I can’t tell them apart.”

Her instinct is probably right. The experts are unanimous in saying that the single most important thing for teachers when dealing with multiple-birth children is to recognise and encourage their individuality. “It’s terribly easy to view them as a unit, particularly if they’re identical,” says Faith Hallett of the Multiple Births Foundation.

While knowing their names is part of this, there are many other twin traps not to fall into. Faith Hallett recommends giving both children copies of all letters and notes being sent home, and making separate appointments at parents’ evening for each child (and, if possible, a third slot for discussing them as twins). Teachers can also help by encouraging twins and triplets in separate friendships. The phrase “the quads” rarely passes anyone’s lips at Over Hall; the children are called by their individual names, or “the Hill children”, for short.

Teachers should beware too of comparing twins, although this is hard not to do, particularly with identical children. “Because they’re so similar, if one goes slightly ahead, it makes the standard the other has to aspire to,” says Sue Caldwell. One risky way to differentiate is by making a false polarisation between the pair. If they are seen as “the quiet one and the noisy one”, “the dominant one and the passive one”, then they tend to fall into those roles. “So often one child can lose confidence,” says Pat Preedy, “particularly in the boygirl situation where people are saying ‘oh you’re not so good at reading as your sister’. I would say never compare the children to their detriment. ”

By adolescence, twins are likely to be well aware of any differences in development: one sister starting her period before the other can “cause torment in an already difficult adolescence”, says Faith Hallett. One adult twin remembers how at 13 his sister was having older boyfriends “and I was just a little pip-squeak”.

Sue Caldwell, triplet teacher, remembers: “My sisters and I strived to be regarded as individuals. We didn’t want to be treated as one person split into three. But when my elder sister was made head of house, my sister and I felt terribly aggrieved. In a way, deep down, you do still want to be treated exactly the same.”

While valuing the children as individuals, teachers should not overlook the twinship, or forget to celebrate it. “It’s important that they actually do enjoy their twinship,” says Pat Preedy. “It’s so easy to focus on potential problems, particularly language. But they actually have got a special relationship that none of us can ever have.”

The Twins and Multiple Birth Association (TAMBA) is running an education study day on March 25 in Wiltshire. Details, a school’s pamphlet and other leaflets are available from: The Administrator, TAMBA, PO Box 30, Little Sutton, South Wirral, L66 1TH Tel: 051 348 0020

Information on twins and “supertwins” is also available from : The Multiple Births Foundation, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, Goldhawk Road, London W6 OXG. Tel: 081 740 3519