Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. It's a fact that has local education authorities, health services and the government all desperately working to get across the message that parenthood is best delayed until after a young person has gained some qualifications and left school.
In the London Borough of Islington, the problem is particularly acute, which is why they have jumped at the chance to pilot a programme aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy rates. The project is called Teens and Toddlers and it involves the pairing of 14 and 15 year-olds with toddlers at local nursery schools to give them a glimpse of the realities of parenting. Of the 300 teenagers who have been through the programme since 2004 only two girls have become pregnant - statistically it would be 26.
The programme was originally the brainchild of the American writer Laura Huxley, the wife of the novelist Aldous Huxley. Anna McNamee spent an afternoon with the Teens and Toddlers project at Duncombe Primary School where she also met Diana Whitmore who is project director here in the UK.
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