Critics have attacked as “flawed” a new scheme in which Scottish children as young as eleven receive sex education from 
14-year-olds.
The Health Buddies pilot project, which is taking place in Dundee, involves pupils as young as 14 teaching younger children about issues such as contraception and puberty in a bid to cut teen pregnancy rates.
The UK has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Europe. The so-called ‘health buddies’ are also expected to direct youngsters to where they can get advice on homosexual issues.
But critics see the new project as plodding on with the same failed approach to sex education.
A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland ridiculed it, saying: “The legal age for sexual intercourse is 16. This initiative is the equivalent of having 15-year-olds teach younger children how to drive a car.
“All the evidence suggests the decades we have wasted on such flawed approaches have been counter-productive.”
These concerns were echoed by Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, who said: “Parents and teachers should not be abdicating their responsibilities in this way and using school children to offer advice in areas where they lack the necessary wisdom, experience and maturity.”
His concerns were echoed earlier this week by Mandy Smith, who slept with Rolling Stone Bill Wyman when she was just 14.
She made an impassioned plea for the age of consent to be raised from 16, saying: “I don’t think most 16-year-olds are ready. I think the age of consent should be raised to 18 at a minimum, and some girls aren’t even ready then.”
But Eleanor Conor, spokesman for the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, defended the move, saying: “This is a very important subject and so we have to be very creative about how we deliver it.”
The £45,000 a year scheme is being piloted Menzieshill High and Morgan Academy in Dundee.
The city has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, and if the scheme proves successful it could be rolled out across the rest of Scotland.
Professor David Paton, an economist with the University of Nottingham, has pointed out that programmes which aim to cut teen pregnancy which involve giving teenagers more information about sex, or easier access to contraception have not worked.
In a talk hosted in Dublin last month by the Iona Institute, Professor Paton said that proposals to make it easier for teens to get contraception had not worked in the UK.
The Law Reform Commission here has made proposals which would enable doctors to prescribe contraception to teenagers as young as 14 without their parents knowledge or consent.