There have been concerns that some private settings, which havepartnership status and can, therefore, access grants from the Scottishgovernment to cover the cost of free nursery education sessions, havenot met criteria laid down by the council.
Margaret Doran, the city council's executive director of education,indicated that the purpose of the council inspections, carried out inaddition to the statutory inspections by the Scottish Care Commission,were not aimed at reducing the number of partnership nurseries.
She said, 'This is about improving the quality of all the nurseries inGlasgow, including partnership nurseries. We want to identify thequality of education and care provided by our partnership nurseries andwork with them to improve it where necessary.'
Moira Small, speaking on behalf of Early Education in Scotland, welcomednews of the additional inspections and said they were necessary becausein some settings there were not enough trained and experienced earlyyears teachers or nursery nurses.
'I am on the side of having teachers as team leaders and in managementpositions as well as being educators. I do know that Glasgow council ismoving a lot of their teachers out of nurseries because of the expense,'she added.
A Glasgow council spokeswoman said that nurseries in the city obtainedpartnership status if the authority deems that there is a need fornursery education places in their locality.
