Holland has the lowest rate of children born to teenage mothers across Western Europe - six times lower than Britain's statistics at the opposite end of the league table, writes Laura Donnelly.

When teenagers do fall pregnant, those in the Netherlands are slightly more likely than their counterparts in the UK to have abortions. But the gap between the number of births to teenage mothers is better explained by the lower levels of sexual activity in Holland before the age of consent.

In the UK, the average teenager loses his or her virginity at the age of 16½ - more than a year before the Dutch average, while young people in the Netherlands are far more likely than their British peers to use contraception.

Liberal campaigners in this country point to Holland's permissive health policies, including compulsory sex education in schools from the age of five, as being key to its success. While schools are free to design their own programmes, some of the most shocking initiatives have included condom demonstrations for 10?year?olds, trips to sex shops for older teenagers, and cartoon videos on how to masturbate.

But advocates of the Dutch approach say the practical demonstrations are just a tiny part of their agenda, which encourages teens to discuss the moral and emotional implications of sex. Typical debates include reasons to have sex, what to say if a boy refuses to wear a condom and how to maintain self-respect.

Dutch campaigners say Britain's schools tick the box for sex education by providing biology lessons and free condoms, without arming teenage girls with the confidence to say no to unwanted advances, or to care for their sexual health.

A study of teenagers in Holland and Britain found that while boys and girls in the Netherlands gave "love and commitment" as their primary reason for losing their virginity, as did girls in this country, British boys were more strongly influenced by peer pressure, opportunity and physical attraction. Further British research showed that one-third of teenage girls lost their virginity to please a boyfriend, while more than half had experienced unprotected sex.

Sex education initiatives are failing to control the spiralling teenage pregnancy crisis, ministers have admitted for the first time.

Every year, almost 50,000 girls under 18 fall pregnant, leading critics to claim that government-led efforts to encourage safer sex are backfiring. The number who conceive is at its highest level since a multi-million-pound teenage pregnancy crackdown almost a decade ago.

	Kizzy Neal was 13 when she became pregnant with her son, Kaylib. She feels she did not receive adequate sex education

As a result, Britain tops the league table of teenage mothers in western Europe, despite also having a record number of school-age abortions.

This comes despite the Government investing more than £150 million in an attempt to stem the tide of conceptions - and pledging to cut teenage pregnancy rates by half by the end of this decade.

Ministers admit - in a document quietly released before the Christmas parliamentary recess - that the 2010 target to cut teenage pregnancies is doomed to failure.

A performance report on the Department of Health website confirms progress towards the target has been hit by "slippage" and warns that "progress needs to accelerate" for the target to be met.

Amid a rising teenage population, the conception rate has dropped by only 11 per cent since 1998, in stark contrast to the 50 per cent target. At the same time, the overall number of teenage pregnancies has gone up to more than 47,000 a year.

In the 1970s, rates were similar across western Europe, but while other states have had marked success in bringing down the numbers of pregnancies, Britain now has the highest teenage birth rate: six times that of Holland, four times that of Italy and three times higher than in France.

Government policies aimed at dealing with the problem have allowed girls to obtain standard contraceptive and morning-after pills at school, without the consent of their parents, while new proposals will allow them to go directly to pharmacists.

Last night, critics said that Labour's policies had backfired and made girls feel increasingly under pressure to become sexually active at a younger age. Others expressed fears that national targets were powerless in the face of a popular culture in which youth was increasingly sexualised.

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust charity, said that the Government had allowed the "systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex". There was no evidence that easy availability of contraception reduced teenage pregnancy rates, instead it added to pressure on young girls by normalising under-age sex, he said.

Mr Wells also attacked the Government's commitment to confidentiality policies about contraception which "kept parents in the dark about their children's sexual activity".

"The problems associated with teenage pregnancy will never be solved so long as the Government persists with its reliance on yet more contraception and sex education," he said. "What we need is a radical change away from a culture which has reduced sex to a casual recreational activity."

Girls who could obtain contraception before the age of consent were more likely to become sexually active, leading to higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, pregnancies and abortions, he said.

The combination of sexual images in the media with explicit sex education had broken down the natural inhibitions of children about sex, while progressively easier availability of contraception meant that young girls could no longer use fear of pregnancy as a reason to reject sexual advances, Mr Wells added.

The Government committed itself in 1999 to halving the teenage pregnancy rate among 16- and 17-year-olds by 2010, compared with 1998 figures.

However, by 2005 - the last year for which full figures are available - the rate fell by only 11.4 per cent. The same figures show that between 1999 and 2005 the overall number of 16- and 17-year-olds becoming pregnant increased from 39,247 to 39,804.

When girls aged between 13 and 15 were added, the total rose from 46,655 to 47,277, more than when Labour launched the strategy in 1999.

Meanwhile, the number of teenage pregnancies ending in abortion rose.

In 2005, 47 per cent of pregnancies among 16- and 17-year-olds were terminated, compared with 42 per cent in 1998. Among younger girls, the rate rose from 53 per cent to 58 per cent.

The Government's admission of failure is contained in a report on NHS targets by Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. It also shows an increasing gulf between the health of the poorest people and the rest of the population and concludes that efforts to measure whether the health service offers "value for money" have failed.

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said that the Government's failure was rooted in an attempt to find "state-led solutions" to problems that needed to be tackled by families and communities. "Our research has shown that progress is only being made in the areas where people are relatively well-off, whereas in deprived areas the situation is often getting worse.

"What we actually need is for family-led organisations, and local communities and the voluntary sector to work together on these problems."

Anne Atkins, a social commentator, said the emphasis on sex education and contraception was giving young people the message that sex at a young age was inevitable. "The message may be intended to be 'when you have sex, use a condom', but what young people hear is the 'when you have sex' part," she said.

"In some ways it is good that we have reduced some of the shame around sex that there was in the 1950s, but in other ways we have just replaced it with a new type of misery, with unwanted babies being brought up by teenage girls."

Simon Blake, of the charity Brook, which provides young people with advice and contraceptive services, said: "We need to give them greater opportunities to do something, and to be someone, so that falling pregnant at a young age is a less attractive option. It isn't all about sex education or contraception."

Ann Furedi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which carries out abortions, said the NHS was already failing to give the right contraception to girls at very high risk of becoming pregnant.

Many teenagers given counselling by BPAS after an abortion opted for a "long-term" contraceptive injection to prevent a further pregnancy, but primary care trusts often refused to fund it, she said.

"We are talking about girls who have had an abortion, who often live quite chaotic lives, and where this sort of contraceptive is the most appropriate.

To deny the funding is short-term thinking at its worst."

The Department for Children, Schools and Families, which has been given responsibility for the 2010 target, said that the Government made "no apology for setting stretching targets" which it would continue to work to meet.