NEWS that Family Planning Victoria has proposed a plan to make condoms available to high school kids has been met with alarm by The Daily Advertiser columnist and child psychologist John Irvine.

In a radical plan to reduce teenage pregnancies, the tax-payer-financed group said condoms should be kept in student common rooms, or distributed by machines.

According to Dr Irvine however, the role a school plays in the sex lives of its students should start and finish at education.

"Any encouragement of underage sex is not something a school should be part of," Dr Irvine said.

"Parents need to take that kind of responsibility – it's their child.

"School sex education is conducted in health and PD (personal development) classes – where the students are made fully aware of their bodily changes and the preventative side.

"But it's education rather than telling them nothing and providing condoms."

While Dr Irvine said there was no place for providing contraception in schools he was more open to the idea of providing it to sexually active children through community programs or other mediums.

"If kids have a track history of being sexually active, condoms and/or implants for girls so they don't get STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and they're not falling pregnant is appropriate," he said.

"The research which has been done on teen parenting suggests the prognosis is not good.

"It's not something we should encourage."

The call for condoms in schools was made in the wake of research that shows a quarter of year 10 students reported having had sex, and this rose to half by year 12.

A statement released by the NSW department of education and training yesterday said: "There have been no recent requests to consider distributing condoms to students and the department of education and training is not contemplating any distribution."