Daily roundup: Schools and abortion, Gove criticism and Baby P five years on

Teachers are singling out girls who have had abortions and giving inaccurate and misleading lessons on the issue, the sexual health charity Brook has claimed. Details of how schools are teaching pupils about abortion came to light after a Brook project Education for Choice (EFC) ran an online survey. Around 30 per cent of under-20s questioned said they had received no abortion education, while others said it was taught with a religious slant.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has come in for criticism from the education ministers in Wales and Northern Ireland after he failed to consult them on proposed changes to the examinations system. The BBC reports that Leighton Andrews and John O’Dowd have written to Gove to complain about a lack of prior notice of the plans.

More than 100 children under the age of one have been killed since the death of baby Peter Connelly, according to the NSPCC. The charity says that despite improvements in child protection in the five years since his death on August 3 2007, babies and toddlers are still dying in violent circumstances and are eight times more likely to be killed than older children.

The closure of a maternity unit near the Scottish border, has left expectant mothers with an hour long drive to their nearest maternity hospital, the Berwick Advertiser reports. The newspaper says the Berwick Maternity Unit has closed following a steep decline in the number of babies born there, leading to concerns about the ability of midwives to maintain their birthing skills.

The Department of Health has written to health chiefs calling on them to closely monitor local health visitor recruitment, in order to keep the government’s drive to increase the number of professionals by 4,200 on course. The letter provides a “trajectory of growth” in health visitor numbers up to April 2015, giving regional breakdowns of target numbers.