TEACHERS at a Burnley school could be forgiven for doing a double-take after four sets of identical twins enrolled to begin lessons.
And, just to keep it all in the family, four further sets of twins – two boy-girl pairings and two sets of non-identical girls – also signed up at Blessed Trinity RC College.
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They were all born between November 2002 and March 2003 – and their very existence is set to prove to be an occasional headache for tutors.
“We do play pranks,” said Joshua Cooper, whose identical twin is Bradley.
“People muddle us up so we do play on it at times – in fact one of the teachers didn’t realise there were two of us until she saw us together recently,” said Bradley.
“She kept saying she had spoken to one of us, when in fact she had spoken to the other.
“Being one of a twin does make us popular though.”
The three others sets of twins are Jimmy and Jason Jiang, Nathan and Joshua Daulton and Connor and Callum Pickard.
Mixed feelings prevail when it comes to the boy-girl pairings though.
Olivia Kelly, whose twin is Isaac, said: “It’s quite annoying being a twin. We just fight all the time.”
And Francesca Musso, the twin of Nico, added: “I don’t think we look like each other at all.”
Abby and Emily O'Brien and Holly and Ellie Ratcliffe round off the amazing assembly.
Holly, who attended Christ the King with Ellie, said: “I didn’t think there was eight sets of twins. It is unusual but it’s quite nice too that we aren’t the only ones.”
Lindsay Bleazard, head of Year Seven at the Ormerod Road school, said it is easy to sometimes get the pairings muddled up.
She said: “It’s unbelievable – at every primary school we went to talk to last year, there seemed to be another set of twins who wanted to come to Blessed Trinity.
“We didn’t realise there were so many until we sat down and counted them.
“To have eight was a huge surprise and we have never had that many before.
“There must have been something in the water!”
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