A CONTROVERSIAL scheme allowing girls as young as 11 to text for the morning-after pill could be rolled out to more schools.

Oxfordshire County Council and Oxfordshire NHS Primary Care Trust targeted four schools in Oxford and two in Banbury – the two places in the county identified as teenage pregnancy ‘hotspots’ – since July.

As part of the initiative, health chiefs are also offering advice on general, mental and sexual health issues.

They aim to cut the number of teenage pregnancies in the county after a jump of almost 10 per cent in the number of girls aged 18 and under getting pregnant.

The number went up from 320 in 2006 to 350 in 2007.

And now – despite the fact fewer than five young people have used the service so far, none of whom were given the pill – the PCT is looking at expanding it.

To date, the six schools signed up are: St Gregory the Great, Cheney, Oxford Academy, Oxford School, the North Oxfordshire Academy, in Banbury, and Banbury School.

As part of the scheme, drop-in sessions were set up, as well as two mobile numbers which linked people directly to health nurses.

Controversially, these enabled girls to text requests for the pill if they had had unprotected sex, or believed contraception had failed.

The trust is also working on a new promotional strategy to let more young people know about it, possibly through social networking site Facebook.

Alex Hammond, children’s services service manager at the PCT, said the take-up of the service had been lower than hoped but that the trust still wanted to offer it to more pupils in more schools.

She said: “We’re considering taking it out to other schools, but we’re not going to do this without full consultation with the schools.

“If a young person were to text in to request emergency contraceptive they would be offered a face-to-face appointment for a full clinical assessment with one of the nurses before a decision was made about whether to give it (the morning-after pill) or not.

“We want to reassure people these are highly professional qualified nurses.”

The scheme had originally been planned to be available through the school holidays but the PCT and county council decided to keep the mobile phone lines open to young people between Monday and Friday, 9am to 5pm, once the holidays were over.

Ms Hammond added: “We are aware that any new service takes time to get established.

“The PCT and county council are continuing to work in partnership to ensure that the service meets the health needs of young people.”

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, hit out at the PCT’s plans.

He said: “It really does beggar belief the PCT is determined to expand a service for which there’s no demand and where there’s no evidence that it would reduce teenage pregnancy rates.

“International research evidence shows that making the morning-after pill more readily available doesn’t make the slightest difference to unintended pregnancy and abortion rates.

“In fact, there’s evidence that making the morning-after pill available to underage girls in strict confidence may be making matters worse by encouraging some girls to become sexually active when they might not otherwise have done so.”

The PCT has yet to decide how many extra schools will be targeted in the expansion programme or how much it will cost.

However, it said the cost of the new sexual health programme was being covered by additional funding of £320,000 made available in the 2008-9 budget “to increase the provision of school nursing services in Oxford and Banbury”.

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