The formerly conjoined Benhaffaf twins will start their first day of school next year.

The twins were joined at the chest with just one leg each when they were born. They were separated in 2010 in a 14 hour long operation that required four surgeons and 20 medical staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The boys’ mother Angie Benhaffaf, from Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, said that the four-year-old boys have been making progress on their prosthetic limbs.

She believes her “little fighters,” as she called them in a poem she wrote about her sons, will be able to meet the physical demands of national school in September 2015.

"It's incredible what they can do. When we take them to the playground, people are amazed to see them both scramble up a 20ft slide on their own,” she told the Irish Independent.

"The boys could have started school this September, but my gut feeling tells me they're physically not quite ready.

"They're doing great on their prosthetic limbs, but it would be too big a step for them to start going into school five days a week.

"Also, I don't think they're emotionally quite ready for school yet.

"Not every child at school is necessarily going to be kind to them or understanding and I've noticed one or two incidents over the summer when something was said to the boys which upset them.

"But I think that by September next year they'll be more than ready to start school."

Hassan will return to Great Ormond Street next month to have surgery to straighten his spine – a procedure he will require every six months until adulthood.