Teenage pregnancy and education : girls right to education and how it is affected by pregnancy before the age of eighteen

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the ways the right to education of teenage mothers is affected in the cases of Greece and Northern Ireland. For the assessment of this right are used the 4As scheme for evaluating whether education is accessible, available, acceptable and adaptable and states’ obligations of respect, protection and fulfilment. Despite the fact that the right to education is protected by various international, national and domestic legal documents in the two referred countries, reality differs from theory. Teenage mothers face lack of policies and insufficient monitoring of the existing ones with regard to their education. They are unaware of their rights in order to claim them and when this is not the case, bureaucracy hardens the realisation of their rights. Schools neither adjust to the needs of school age mothers, nor prepare them for the job market and most of the times schools’ personnel defines their educational future. Lack of benefits and tutors for their due date, uniform changes and difficulties in transportation towards their school, child’s nursery and home enhance the disengagement of teenage mothers from education. This thesis presents the weaknesses between theory and practice, but on the other hand by the analysis of these cases, the author highlights the situation within Europe and specifically in Greece and in Northern Ireland.