Parents 'must talk to children about sex' to cut teenage pregnancies

Parents need to be better equipped to talk to young people about sex and relationships according to government advisors on teenage pregnancy.

In its fifth annual report published today, the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG) recommended that parents are sent advice packs to equip them to start conversations at home about sex and relationships and to enable them to feel more involved in what is taught at school.

Once again, TPIAG called for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), which includes Sex and Relationship Education, to be made a statutory part of the national curriculum, to ensure that all children get age appropriate information.

TPIAG Chair, Ms Gill Frances OBE, said: “There need to be more conversations about sex and relationships both at home and at school.

"Parents are a child’s first educators and they need to know how to talk about the issues if we are serious about reducing teenage pregnancy in this country.

“We need young people to be able to make informed decisions, to stop and think, and to be able to resist peer pressure to have early or unsafe sex.”

Ms Frances highlighted the national success of the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which has seen rates fall more than 13% since 1998, making them the lowest for more than 20 years, but she said more needed to be done to accelerate the reduction.

“Many areas have made extraordinary progress since the start of the strategy but we need to see all local authorities scaling up their work to achieve consistently good results across the country,” she said.

The TPIAG report called for young people to get easy access to appropriate contraception and sexual health services both in the community and in schools and colleges.

The report recommended greater use of contraceptive implants and suggested abortion providers should be funded to supply contraception to reduce the number of repeat abortions.