When I did teacher training one of my practice sessions was in a school in a sink area of North London.

I was in charge of a class of 14 year olds and found that it was very difficult to motivate them to do anything. I asked them what they were going to do when they left school. There were quite a number who told me that they would get a job in Woolworths, or the equivalent. (I told them that you have to take a test to get a job there - been there done it in the 60s). Some of the girls, even at that time in the late 70s, were saying that they wouldn't have to work as they were going to have babies.

Part of the problem is that a lot of these kids are bought up in homes where no real effort seems to be made to give them some idea that they can achieve something more. These are homes where the TV is on full time, meals are snatched events and parents either don't have the ability to or interest in spending time with their children. Having lived for the first 30 odd years of my life in sink areas I knew many families like that. My own parents were very similar, although considered themselves to be 'respectable'.

Kids bought up in homes like that, and in neighbourhoods that contain numbers of these families, are as likely to fall into the mould, unless they get a real push somewhere along the line. My push came in seeing, where I lived, the number of single mothers with teenage children still taking benefits. I decided that I was not going to fall into that rut and went back and got the education that I hadn't got at school, (partly because I was left feeling that I was a failure and that no-one really cared about how I did at school).

In my case I married the father of my children but the marriage lasted only five years and that was it. I don't regret the way things worked out but can see the sense of Giok's idea which would allow for education and training to try and break the vicious circle. As I said previously, these days further education is beyond the means of a lot of these kids. Whilst I am aware that the present day hostels are no always good places maybe more money should be put into the system to make them more than stopping places. They should be places that give support, to enable girls to get further education, even if it is only in childcare but also to make it clear to all that getting pregnant is not an open sesame to housing and benefits.