Families will be hit by increased childcare costs under government plans to “professionalise” nursery staff.

In an attempt to give children from poor backgrounds a better start in life, ministers want thousands of childcarers to study a new three-year, degree-style qualification.

Many junior nursery staff currently earn as little as £10,000, while the lowest salary for a graduate-level job in the profession is about £16,000.

Critics fear the need to gain a qualification will drive many valued nursery workers to quit and also raise costs for parents.

Improving the quality of nursery staff lies at the heart of the government’s plans for boosting social mobility, which will be set out in a white paper by the end of the year.

Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, the children, schools and families secretary, have been influenced by sociologists who argue children from deprived

families have little chance of escaping poverty if they have fallen behind their middle-class peers by the age of five.

Nurseries, including the government’s Sure Start centres, can currently take on staff with no educational qualifications.

Teachers’ unions have warned that the weak social skills and qualifications of many nursery workers may give rise to a “generation of Vicky Pollards”, a reference to the yobbish teenager from the BBC comedy Little Britain.

While some childcarers may welcome the training as a route to higher pay, others fear the drive for professionalism will encourage many talented amateur staff to pursue other work.

Sharon Lougheed, who runs three nurseries in East Sussex, said: “In theory, more training is good, but I’m sure people will quit nursing rather than go back and study. I found studying for a childcare NVQ while working in a nursery incredibly stressful.

“Fifteen years of working in a nursery has given me good skills and I don’t see why the government should tell me to go back to college.”

Simon Arthur, who founded the Pelican nursery school in Kennington, south London, said: “The danger is that many good people just wouldn’t be good in a university-style environment and would leave.

“Running a nursery is hard work, with long hours. Where are people expected to find time to train?”

Kristina Thompson, who has worked in a nursery in Stoke Newington, north London, for 15 years, said: “I know people who would rather leave nurseries than take a training course, but there is no doubt something has to be done to improve skills and pay.”

The government is already making preschool education more rigorous. A “toddler’s curriculum” – the Early Years Foundation Stage – comes into force tomorrow with 69 targets for the development of literacy, counting and problem-solving.

Government guidance tells nursery workers, for example, they should: “look, listen and note . . . babies’ interest in the marks they make when they rub a rusk round the tray of a feeding chair”; “provide gloop” for infants to play with, and help children gain a basic grasp of cultural diversity.

The government introduced a graduate-level qualification for childcarers two years ago, but only a few thousand out of around 170,000 workers have taken the Early Years Professional certificate.

There is no plan to make the qualification statutory, but ministers are expected to raise the target for the proportion of childcarers holding one to 50%.

Although some parents may welcome better-qualified staff, the cost will place further strains on family finances. In the past year alone, the typical cost of arranging 35 hours a week of daycare has risen by nearly 20% to £7,500 a year.

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