Every Scottish secondary school should have a sex clinic, the Scottish Government has announced.
The Roman Catholic Church has strongly criticised the move saying it is “arguably the most counterproductive development in public health ever seen”.
The sex clinics will offer children free condoms and pregnancy tests.
Parents will not be told about their children using these services unless the young people are deemed to be “abused or exploited”.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “It is vital that young people’s services are available when and where they require them.”
She also said: “Where possible, services will be provided in all schools”.
The spokeswoman added: “When a school cannot provide this service an alternative service will be provided within 20 minutes walking distance from the school.”
Roman Catholic schools will not be required to have the clinics.
Peter Kearney, speaking for the Roman Catholic Church, said: “A general increase in sexual health services over the past ten years has been mirrored exactly by an explosion in sexual health problems.
“As these services have expanded, sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies and abortions have exploded.
“This approach is tantamount to pouring petrol on a fire.”
The Scottish Conservative deputy leader, Murdo Fraser said: “This needs to be done in full consultation with parents because many, many parents will be concerned, if not potentially alarmed, that children as young as eleven will be exposed to these messages.”
The plans come in a new report entitled Do The Right Thing.
The roll out to all secondary schools follows a pilot project run in rural schools.
Dr David Paton at Nottingham University has clearly stated that the Westminster Government’s teenage pregnancy strategy has been “absolutely disastrous”.
He said in March that since the strategy began diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections have increased while the rate of decline in pregnancy rates has slowed.
He said: “The hope was the more money you spend the faster and faster the declines – in fact we have seen the opposite, the declines have decreased.”
Further evidence came after a scheme which aimed to promote safe sex among teenagers actually increased the likelihood of the girls becoming pregnant.
The scheme gave free condoms to under 16s and the morning-after pill to schoolgirls in the Lothians.
Figures released in 2004 showed that girls in the scheme aged between 13 and 15 were 14% more likely to get pregnant than their counterparts elsewhere in Scotland.
Before the scheme was launched the figure was just 3%.