Majority of nurses currently take diplomas. In future they will be required to study for a degree over three or more years

All new nurses will have to hold a degree-level qualification to enter the profession from 2013, the health minister Ann Keen announced today.

The aim is to increase skills and train a medical workforce capable of operating in a more analytical and independent manner.

Around a quarter of nursing students currently take degrees; the rest complete diplomas courses that usually last two years.

The precise contents of the new degree courses, that will last three or four years, have not yet been finally agreed. The new standards are being developed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the professional regulator for nursing.

Ann Keen said: "Nurses are the largest single profession within the health service, and are critical to the delivery of high quality health care. Degree level education will provide new nurses with the decision-making skills they need to make high-level judgements in the transformed NHS."

The government's chief nursing officer, Christine Beasley, said: "More young people than ever are studying for a degree and this will make nursing more attractive to them. Degree-level nurse education will... ensure that new nurses have the support they need to make the transition to confident practitioner.

The NMC's chief executive, Dickon Weir-Hughes, said: "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."

Garth Long, the education advisor at the NMC, said that in future more nurses will have to learn how to work on their own in the community. "There's been a tendency to think that nurses should work in residential settings [like hospitals] to consolidate their skills.

"But there will be much more health care in the community in future. Nurses need to be more confident and analytical in their work. More people are a degree course that will provide a future career, so this will help recruitment."

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, also welcomed the change. "This is an important and historic development, which the RCN has been in support of for many years," he said. ""All nurses need to put quality care at the centre of what they do, and they also need extensive knowledge, analytical skills and experience to work in a range of settings.

"Many nursing roles are demanding and involve increasingly advanced levels of practice and clinical knowledge. 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."

But the Patients Association opposed the shift. It said: "The basics of nursing care are dignity, compassion and, above all, safety. Since the introduction of Project 2000 [an earlier initiative to upgrade nurses' training], which shifted training from the bedside to the classroom, nurses look to the personal prizes of nurse specialisms and have been allowed to ignore the needs of their sick, vulnerable and often elderly patients. These new proposals risk making the situation worse.

"It need not be like this – for patients and trainee nurses alike. With a combined diploma and degree system, there is still enough room to move up the hierarchy and make career progress. Making it degree-only sends out the wrong message, especially when the Government knows there are problems following Project 2000.

"The academic must be secondary to the practical. Only then will patients get the nurses they want and trust – the right ones with the right attitude. It must never become more important to write about care than to give it. If our nurses do not have the basics of training, the costs of care will soar because of infection rates and overblown bureaucracy."