Search this website:

National surveys - ACER (Australia) and PIPS (UK)

The most complete Australian data on this topic come from the 1975 Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Study of School Performance. We refer to the 1975 Survey as unfortunately, while there have been more recent surveys, they no longer ask if the children are twins or higher multiples. Nevertheless, this is a very representative study of almost 13,000 children, half aged 10 and half 14. At age 10, twin boys were a long way behind the singleborns and the twin girls a bit behind in their mastery of literacy. By age 14, the twin girls but not the boys had essentially caught-up with the singleborns. At this age, over 70% of these young people possessed reading skill sufficient to "survive" in Australian society, for example being able to interpret the pages in a mock newspaper that had the employment or especially the sport sections! Among the twin boys the figure was only 40%.

Noticeably more were below average in the accuracy of their reading, as well as in their reading comprehension. This distinction between reading correctly and understanding what one reads is fundamental to understanding why more twins have reading problems and is discussed later in more detail. Of the twins below average at reading, about one-third are so far behind that they would be labeled as "reading disabled". As there is no recent Australian data, the UK data based on children just staring school now has become particularly important.

The Performance Indicators in Primary School (PIPS) were developed at the CEM Centre of the University of Durham by Professor Peter Tymms, to measure the childrens starting point on school entry and their progress throughout the school years. This is fundamental to assessment, as it is not just the final achievement that matters, but childrens comparative progress taking into account their starting point. If children are a long way behind their peers at the start, then rising to average levels is a great achievement. What the PIPS baseline data show is only a modest difference between twins and singleton births in the children ready to start school in 2000, given 2.6% or one in 38 children were twins or higher multiples. Multiples were a little behind in basic reading and mathematics skills, but the effects were quite modest and should not be an issue for most families or teachers-except we do not know what will happen in the long-term. Obviously most multiples will be no different from singleborn children, but will there be a small group where being a multiple is an issue in developing effective intervention?