GILLIAN KULWICKI is head of a large Glasgow nursery. She is a trained teacher with a postgraduate degree in early education and 27 years of experience.

Belmont nursery is bright and bustling and full of life — 100 children pass through her doors every day, and 14 other staff. But if the SNP wants to use Belmont to advertise its much vaunted commitment to preschool education, and “access” to a nursery teacher, it should look elsewhere.

“Every morning I put my head round the door of each room and say good morning to the children,” Kulwicki says. “As far as ‘access’ to a teacher goes, that’s it.”

Belmont nursery is highly regarded and serves a mixed community in northwest Glasgow. Three years ago, HM Inspectorate of Education rated it “a centre of excellence”, but a recent report rates it as merely “adequate”. What has changed? Two experienced, qualified teachers have left and have not been replaced, so apart from Kulwicki, the staff are nursery nurses with SVQ or HNC qualifications.

Kulwicki has been comforting weeping nursery nurses and listening to raging parents, but she knows the quality of education she can offer has deteriorated since the teachers left.

“They were specialist teachers with 30 years of experience. Our nursery nurses are newly qualified and don’t interact with the children in the same way. They need to learn and they need mentoring. The loss of the teachers is a horrific one,” she says.

Kulwicki’s experience is far from unique. Glasgow has the country’s worst record on preschool education, according to the teachers’ union the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS). At the age of three, every child is entitled to 38 weeks of free nursery education, for 12½ hours every week. The SNP has raised this figure from 35 weeks and promises that every child will have “access” to a trained teacher, though as we’ve seen this can mean very little. The hours are non-negotiable, but the quality is variable.

Glasgow has phased out trained teachers across all its nurseries, and only headteachers are educated to degree level. Stirling is set to follow suit. Some local authorities are committed to keeping teachers in nurseries, and others have a system of sharing teachers between schools; it has become a postcode lottery.

Studies have highlighted how a good preschool experience can affect a child’s outcome throughout his or her schooldays and beyond. Every pound spent at the ages of three and four is reckoned to save £7, as the child is less likely to get involved in criminal activity and more likely to be productive.

The SNP has shown a willingness to prioritise preschool education, appointing Adam Ingram minister for children and early years and mapping out a 10-year strategy. There have even been trips to Scandinavia to see how they do it there, but it comes down to the bottom line. Norway, once behind Scotland for preschool provision, has overtaken us, spending 2% of its GDP on early years education (in Scotland it’s 0.5%).

The SNP administration claims to be all for preschool education. “We’ve moved quickly to extend nursery provision across Scotland by raising levels to 475 hours per year for all three and four-year olds, and we are committed to increasing entitlement by 50%,” it said.

“We have put in place an extra 300 teachers for our youngest children, ensured an extra 250 teachers started training this academic year, and expect more than 20,000 to have entered teacher training by 2011,” it added. But of course many of these will replace the large number of teachers about to retire.

With most families qualifying for just 12½ hours a week of free nursery care, they have to patch together a range of services for their preschool children, while buckling under the rising cost of living. A child’s third birthday therefore comes as a relief as some childcare costs shift to the state.

A local authority nursery place raises as many problems as it solves. A morning session may run from 9.30am to noon, an afternoon one from 12 to 2.30pm, but few jobs fit in around these hours. Parents who want their child to go to the local authority nursery have no choice but to use a childminder, a kind granny, or a private nursery as well.

Bronwen Cohen, chief executive of the campaigning charity Children in Scotland, says: “The services here are fragmented. We need to look at integrating nursery education with childcare — families do not see these as two separate entities.

“At the moment we put education in the category of something that is in the public interest. Unless the child is in need, the other is something the parents have to pay for, and they pay five or six times as much as parents in Scandinavian countries.”

Anne Hughes, senior lecturer in education at Strathclyde University, says qualifications need to improve at all levels and in public, private and voluntary sectors; she believes that is key to achieving consistent quality.

She says: “The EPPE study [of more than 3,000 children in England] concluded that the presence of a teacher was significantly related to quality outcomes for children. However, it only studied centres where the graduate-level leadership was provided by teachers. In worldwide studies it is having graduate-level staff and some who have studied child development that is related to quality experiences and outcomes.”

For dedicated nursery heads such as Gillian Kulwicki, enough is enough. She has looked at jobs abroad, and says she can leave at any moment. Within the UK, her only other option is the independent sector — “the only ones who take preschool education seriously”.

What if she were offered a redundancy package? “Then I would go,” she says.

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