A boy from Dorset has become the second 13-year-old this month to get his teenage girlfriend pregnant.
Earlier this month it was revealed that a boy from Manchester was “chuffed to bits” to be a dad at 13.
Now another boy the same age – this time from Dorset – is set to become a father after getting his 14-year-old girlfriend pregnant.
A court has ruled their names will not be made public, but reports say the children are at the same school in Poole.
The news is the latest in a history of underage pregnancies in the area of Poole.
In 1997 Jenny Teague became the country’s youngest mother when she gave birth, aged 12, to daughter Sasha.
Two years later, teenage sisters Charlene and Miranda Way, also from Poole, gave birth within months of each other.
This latest case will spark concerns over how the Government is failing on teenage pregnancy.
The Government’s multi-million pound Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was supposed to cut teen conceptions in half by 2010, but is likely to fall desperately short of this target.
Teenage pregnancy rates in England and Wales rose in 2007, with 41.9 girls per 1,000 aged 15 to 17 becoming pregnant, compared with 40.9 in 2006.
Among girls aged 13 to 15 the rate rose from 7.8 per 1,000 girls to 8.3.
Around 8,196 girls aged under 16 became pregnant in 2007.
In March an outspoken critic of the Government’s £250 million Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, Professor David Paton, told a gathering of parliamentarians and political officials that it had been “absolutely disastrous”.
Norman Wells of the Family of Education Trust said in February: “The Government’s teenage pregnancy strategy with all its emphasis on sex education and making contraception freely available to young people is creating a climate in which teenagers think it is normal to be sexually active under the age of 16.”
Earlier this year another 13-year-old, Alfie Patten from East Sussex, made national headlines when his 15-year-old girlfriend, Chantelle Stedman, gave birth.
However, DNA tests subsequently proved that another 15-year-old was the father.