Where Do Royalty's Nannies Get Their Training?

tan uniform and maybe a brown hat. A childcareb is always a rigorous job with lots to learn about, but these nannies have received a particular education at Norland College, an academy that trains the nannies of the world's wealthiest families. A formal childcare education is a relatively new phenomenon for the article. This episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke

with social historian doctor Louise Heron. She said Britain and most European countries had some form of children's nurse, but they would learn on the job, so you could go from being a scullery maid to getting bumped up to lower nurserymaid and then eventually one day you might make children's nurse and be looking at the family. This would change in England in eighteen ninety two when a primary

school teacher named Emily Ward saw an opportunity. Heron said she realized that the nurses and nursery maids were all uneducated. She thought that there was a business opportunity in training children's nurses who could both raise and educate the next generation of our upper classes. Ward founded Norland College in Bath, England, and at first the training program only lasted a few months. Still, the cost to attend was a bit steep. The women who enrolled, and it was only women for a long time,

had a bit of family money. Heron said, the fees forgetting the education at Norland Institute were beyond most working class young women. They were things like a greengrocer's daughter or the daughter of people who had their own small business. But the tuition was well worth it for those who could afford it. In those early years, women who landed a nanny position after their training at Norland started with salaries around thirty to forty pounds a year, on top

of having their expenses paid by their employers. It was great money, especially for a woman in that place and time. As Norland's reputation grew, so did its student body, from just a handful of students who studied for a few months to today's four year course with graduates earning a

BA in early childhood, education and care. The things got complicated for many of the Norlanders spread across Europe in the early twentieth century, as Heron detailed in her book British Nanny's in the Great War, how Norlan's regiment of nanny's coped with conflict and childcare in the Great War. As she said, for Emily Ward, it was always one of her aspirations that she would be placing young women

in aristocratic families, if not royal families. Very quickly she managed to place a couple of girls within the German aristocracy, which worked really well until World War One kicked off. There was one young lady who managed to look after a branch of the imperial family in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. When the revolution kicked off in nineteen seventeen, she managed to escape with them to Finland, but sadly she died

in the nineteen nineteen influenza epidemic. Through it all, Norland carried on with a curriculum designed to produce childcare professionals who are equipped to deal with just about anything from minor medical mishaps to cooking and nutrition to tutoring Haron said they taught the children to read and write, in basic arithmetic, singing, piano and other musical instruments. They'd trained to deal with children up to the age of quite

precisely seven years and eleven months. That's because at eight most young ladies would be passed to the care of a governess and boys would be, as Heron puts it, packed off to prep school. Times have changed in lots of ways over the years. Other schools with a similar model have cropped up. Since twenty fifteen, Norland has accepted

male students, but Norland leans on its traditions. A Norland nanny is easy to spot thanks to the unmistakable uniform, a crisp, light brown dress with white trim or beige trousers and a tweed blazer, with women often sporting a short brimmed brown hat emblazoned with a gold n for formal occasions. For the most part, Norland graduates dress in more modern clothing after graduation, but sometimes their employer will ask them to wear the uniform. Heron said, it's an

old fashioned uniform. It's traditional. At some point the Princess of Wales has asked their nanny to wear a uniform on public duty, not always, but at some key events. In contrast, the school's curriculum now covers some very modern things, the unusual situations that might possibly arise while caring for the children of the world's most powerful people. Heron said, they do lots of exciting things. There's some self defense.

They practice a vasive driving or driving in snow, ice and fog, difficult conditions, and the nannies leave Norlands classrooms having become consummate professionals, thanks in part to the thousands of trainees who have come before them. Heron explained a think of a parent with a first child, muddling through, getting on with it and just occasionally making mistakes. With a Norlander that doesn't happen. There have been some seven thousand nannies trained since the very first day, and they

all provide feedback. If they had an issue, they'd write the college asking for advice. Sometimes they'd write and say, this is how I've dealt with this predicament, and I think other nannies ought to know about it. So in each Norlander you're looking at nine on seven thousand nannies

worth of experience. The total fees for the twenty twenty two to twenty three school year four UK students are just over fifteen thousand pounds that's about nineteen thousand American dollars, and a Norland nanny can expect to make anywhere in the range of thirty two thousand to one hundred and twenty four thousand pounds or more depending on the type and location of service. That's around forty to one hundred

and fifty six thousand American dollars. Every year, about one hundred nannies graduate from Norland, but there are some eleven open positions for every trained Norland nanny, so graduates are very much in demand. Today's episode is based on the article Norland College where the Royals Find their Nannies on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Kate Morgan. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com

and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.