A CRISIS in childcare has forced the Government to use taxpayers’ money to subsidise privately run nurseries in an attempt to improve standards.

Private and voluntary nurseries will be given up to £10,000 a year for every graduate they recruit, The Times has learnt.

Ministers have been forced to act after a series of damning reports into the conditions in private nurseries and crèches used by 630,000 children. Official inspections revealed the lack of staff, poor security and dirty premises faced by parents who spend up to £200 a week on nursery places.

Just one in ten staff at private nurseries has a degree, despite research that shows children do far better at nursery if the staff includes a qualified graduate teacher.

The Government’s own research found that there are 20,000 private, voluntary or independent pre-schools not headed by qualified teachers. In addition, 40 per cent of nursery workers are educated only to NVQ Level 2, not the NVQ Level 3 that is recommended by experts.

Private and voluntary nurseries who employ graduates will be able to have part of their salary reimbursed from next April by the Department for Education and Skills, under a £125 million transformation fund. Fully qualified teachers are paid on average £8,000 to £10,000 more than other nursery staff.

Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, has won two years of funding for the subsidy scheme, although it is highly unusual for the Government to subsidise salaries directly.

Ms Hughes and her officials decided that it would be the most effective way of using taxpayers’ money in order to improve quality.

State-funded nurseries, often attached to a primary school, are usually headed by a graduate but this is rarely the case in private and voluntary pre-schools, which are under more pressure to keep their costs down.

“We are very keen to keep the mixed supply of nursery care, with providers from the independent, private and voluntary sectors, but we want more graduates to be in leadership roles,” one source at the DfES said.

“A direct subsidy for their salary is the most effective way to encourage the recruitment of more graduates.”

The move will be seen by those on the Labour Left as highlighting the danger of using the private sector to expand provision to meet Tony Blair’s manifesto promise of a nursery place for all three-year-olds. About 450,000 under-3s are in nursery care and the Government plans a significant expansion of places over the next few years.

The Daycare Trust, a childcare charity, has been calling for the nursery workforce to be better qualified. Its research study, involving 3,000 youngsters, found that the skills and qualifications of the staff were crucial to the children’s future.

Ministers said that they did not want to insist simply that graduates should be in charge of private and voluntary nurseries, because the additional costs could drive many out of business.

Instead, they hope that a financial incentive will help to bring them into line with state-funded nurseries. Nurseries are the preferred form of childcare for more than 75 per cent of working mothers. However, Ofsted, the education watchdog, said recently that in too many cases there were not enough staff on duty at the start of the day to offer good childcare.

The Daycare Trust believes that much of the criticism would be overcome if the nursery workforce were better trained and educated. It says that 60 per cent should be graduates, with the remainder educated to NVQ Level 3.

Ministers say that they want childcare to become a fully fledged profession, rather than a vocation, with a new breed of teachers specialising in child development of the under-4s.

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