Sanity, it seems, has finally been abandoned in Dundee. So bad are the gymslip mum statistics, with one girl in every 100 aged between 13 and 15 becoming pregnant, that from August, the city council is planning to open a special education centre for these mothers and their babies — in one of its high schools.

For now, pregnant girls and schoolgirl mothers are housed in a unit away from mainstream classrooms. But when this unit closes at the end of this term, these same pupils are to be brought back into Menzieshill high school and given special facilities within sight of their contemporaries.

The madness lies in the minds of those city councillors who cannot see that, if they really want to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies, this will have precisely the opposite effect. It is a pretty safe bet that, within a year or two, demand for places in the pregnancy and teen mother unit at Menzieshill will soar as it becomes impossible for other teenagers, dissatisfied with school and with few aspirations, not to notice that teenage mothers get a much better deal.

Nobody shouts at a pregnant 13-year-old. Nobody wants to overload her with homework. She will elicit sympathy rather than condemnation and may even get out of carrying her schoolbag if she complains that it gives her “pains”. Being pregnant, so other girls will be reminded every day, makes your life much easier.

What do Dundee councillors really think they are doing? Yet their madness seems to be catching if the latest wheeze from Tayside Health Board is anything to go by.

Tayside has the highest abortion rate in Scotland and it plans to cure this by giving away free condoms “within walking distance” of all Dundee secondary schools. The fact that condoms are already widely available to teenagers, and yet still the abortion rate rises, does not seem to have sunk in. Nor does the health board seem to realise that the more condoms they distribute, the more children will feel licensed to have sex. The problem is being tackled from the wrong direction.

It is years since teenage pregnancy was a badge of shame in Scotland and there are many it seems who don’t want it to be so again. But that should not stop us from doing all in our power to reduce the numbers. In the Netherlands, supposedly the most liberal country in the world, they managed. Why can’t we? In part we can’t because those in authority refuse to try any other method than “education, education, education”. Even when education is proven not to work, as it clearly does not in Scotland, where lessons showing children how to put on condoms run in tandem with an increase in teenage sexual activity and teenage pregnancy, we are told we just need more of the same. It is explained that this is the method the Dutch adopted, with explicit sex education from an early age, and it worked for them.

But this is not strictly true. Last year, in Deconstructing the Dutch Utopia, Joost van Loon, a sociologist, showed that sex education in the Netherlands does not start at a younger age than in the UK, nor is it more explicit. He also noted that schools in the Netherlands are far more independent, with no national curriculum, and that, as a result, there are greater differences in the approaches to sex education within Dutch schools than there are between Dutch and British schools.

There is, however, a great difference in how pregnant schoolchildren are treated by the state. In the UK teenage pregnancy is not frowned upon and is financially rewarded with the taxpayer forking out millions to pay for the young mothers and their offspring, in the form of income support, housing benefit, education and employment training and access to childcare.

By contrast, in the Netherlands teen pregnancy still carries some sense of stigma and the people who have to take financial responsibility for babies are the parents. Teenage mothers receive little financial support from the state until they are 18, and even then remain partially dependent on their own parents until they are 21. Few mothers under 18 qualify for housing benefit, and these teenage mums are generally expected to live with their own parents.

The notion that pregnant Scottish teenagers should somehow feel that they have done something wrong is considered worse than sending small boys up chimneys. Instead, pregnant schoolchildren momentarily wring their hands then expect life to go on much as usual — which it does. How can it not? Once the baby actually arrives, you cannot treat it as if it was responsible for its appearance.

Yet this stores up further trouble for the future. Children born to schoolgirls are not born into the sorts of stable family units that the Dutch have proved are far more effective in the fight against teenage pregnancy than any number of condoms. Nor are the babies themselves likely to learn from their mothers’ mistakes. Quite the opposite. Give them 15 years, and they may well be responsible for turning their own gymslip mother into a 30-year-old granny.

What sort of a life is that for mother or child? Yet this is the kind of society Dundee council is promoting by giving teenage mothers special treatment within sight of their peers. No wonder some of the more responsible parents are up in arms. The mother who said that the move would “normalise” teenage pregnancy in the eyes of the other pupils and make them think it was acceptable was quite right.

It may be expensive housing pregnant teenagers away from the mainstream and it may not be politically correct. But if the council wants the problem of teenage pregnancy to decrease rather than increase, it is mad to believe that there is even an option.

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