WHILE Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education has welcomed the declining trend in teenage and pupil pregnancies in South Africa, the Northern Cape still has one of the highest incidents of teenage pregnancies.

Committee chairperson, Nomalungelo Gina, said yesterday that while the members were excited that the trends were going down, they remained worried.

“One teenage pregnancy is one school pregnancy too many,” said Gina.

The committee received a briefing yesterday from the Department of Basic Education, the Department of Social Development and the Department of Health on the prevention and management of pupil pregnancy.

The committee heard that a study by the Human Sciences Research Council, released in 2012, pointed to a decline in teenage fertility rates over the past five decades. However, despite this decline, the study said unintended teenage pregnancies remained unacceptably high.

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