As per the education watchdog, up to 20,000 children could be threatened of suffering from negligence and ill-treatment, as a consequence of improper safeguarding by nurseries and childminders.

Ofsted has released its annual report based on the inspection of 40,818 nurseries and childminders. According to it, around one in every three nurseries and childminders is not protecting the youngsters, as they should. The report identified 760 such childcare providers, who didn’t look after the children under five in their care properly.

There were 11,075 care providers serving about 200,000 children, who were just satisfactory in protecting youngsters from harm.

Also, around 29% of the nurseries and childminders did not meet criteria of good standards of safety and welfare for youngsters. On safety grounds, only 12% were given the ratings of ‘outstanding’, while 59% were categorized as ‘good’. Around 6,000 of the care providers had received formal instructions to upgrade their system.

The safety and welfare related problems included negligence towards identifying and eliminating dangers, maintaining daily hygiene and safeguarding youngsters from abuse.

“Childminders identified as inadequate had a limited understanding of how to ensure children’s safety”, said Inspectors.

The report also concluded that in some cases it was discovered that the providers didn’t comply with safe processes for selection and recruitment.