Two of the country’s biggest unions questioned whether patients would benefit from nurses having a degree.

Unison and Unite said that there was “no compelling evidence” that degrees would improve patient treatment, claiming that the plan was more about raising the status of nursing. “The emphasis should be on competence, not on unfounded notions about academic ability,” a spokeswoman for Unison said.

Barrie Brown, national officer of Unite, said that while the drive for qualifications was a welcome recognition of the high status of the nursing profession, it should not be an academic straitjacket. “We do believe that individuals who aspire to work in nursing should also have the option of training and development without the absolute requirement of a degree.”

Their comments echo a recent call by Gail Adams, Unison’s head of nursing. for “people who have worked in the NHS as healthcare assistants or in other roles” not to be barred from nursing because they did not have a degree.

Universities will start to offer a nursing curriculum from as early as September 2011. A timetable for the overhaul of knowledge and skills required to become a nurse — from textbook anatomy to bedside manner — will be set out by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) today.

The regulator, which has carried out a three-year review of requirements, will begin in January a formal consultation intended to refine the scheme and win over critics.

The planned changes come as critics continue to raise concerns about nurses'’ priorities, the increasing clinical complexity of their work and the fundamentals of care and patient compassion.

More than a quarter of nurses hold a degree. A further 4 per cent hold a postgraduate qualification, while 34 per cent have a diploma. The level of qualifications has risen steadily in recent years; in 2002 17 per cent had degrees and 26 per cent had diplomas.

Dickon Weir-Hughes, chief executive and registrar of the NMC, will today announce that the new standards will be a “cornerstone in ensuring that nurses are able to meet these expectations and continue to provide safe and effective care in the future”.

“Raising the minimum level of education programmes to degree is essential in ensuring that future nursing students are fully prepared to undertake the new roles and responsibilities that will be expected of them by end of the programme,” he will say.

“The different structure of programmes will also ensure that all newly registered nurses are competent in meeting the basic care needs of all people as well as being able to deliver complex care in their chosen field.”

The NMC has been working on the new requirements since 2006. Nursing schools train a mix of applicants from diploma courses (two to three years, depending on the hours) and degree courses (three years) before they can be registered as a nurse.

Training involves a combination of theoretical and practical work but the new standards will include more focus on nurses gaining experience outside traditional NHS settings. This will involve trainees working alongside school nurses or district nurses, or as part of community health teams under supervision, rather than typical placements on hospital wards, the NMC says. Nurses who are already registered will be asked to mentor new applicants in different settings, such as in schools and the community, including a focus on long-term care of the chronically ill.

The consultation will run until the end of April. The standards will then be finalised by the autumn with the first new programmes starting in the autumn of 2011. From the 2013-14 academic year all new applicants will require a degree in nursing but not an honours degree.

Alastair Henderson, deputy director of NHS Employers, said that the raised bar would only improve the health service. “We believe it will contribute to strengthening the quality of care to patients,” he said. “Employers will need consider the implications of the change and look at how they use all their nursing staff.”

Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said that it was vital that students were properly supported through their studies. “This is not about restricting entry to the nursing profession, in fact we must ensure that the door to nursing continues to be as wide as possible. We need a nurse education system which encourages the best entrants to pursue a career in care.”

Anne Milton, the Tory health spokeswoman, said that she hoped the recently formed commission on nursing would ensure the engagement of “a very valuable workforce that may not want to choose an academic path”.

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