Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: vogelban here. If you follow the British royal family, you
Speaker 1: may have noticed that when its youngest members appear in public,
Speaker 1: they're often accompanied by a neatly dressed nanny wearing a
Speaker 1: tan uniform and maybe a brown hat. A childcareb is
Speaker 1: always a rigorous job with lots to learn about, but
Speaker 1: these nannies have received a particular education at Norland College,
Speaker 1: an academy that trains the nannies of the world's wealthiest families.
Speaker 1: A formal childcare education is a relatively new phenomenon for
Speaker 1: the article. This episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke
Speaker 1: with social historian doctor Louise Heron. She said Britain and
Speaker 1: most European countries had some form of children's nurse, but
Speaker 1: they would learn on the job, so you could go
Speaker 1: from being a scullery maid to getting bumped up to
Speaker 1: lower nurserymaid and then eventually one day you might make
Speaker 1: children's nurse and be looking at the family. This would
Speaker 1: change in England in eighteen ninety two when a primary
Speaker 1: school teacher named Emily Ward saw an opportunity. Heron said
Speaker 1: she realized that the nurses and nursery maids were all uneducated.
Speaker 1: She thought that there was a business opportunity in training
Speaker 1: children's nurses who could both raise and educate the next
Speaker 1: generation of our upper classes. Ward founded Norland College in Bath, England,
Speaker 1: and at first the training program only lasted a few months. Still,
Speaker 1: the cost to attend was a bit steep. The women
Speaker 1: who enrolled, and it was only women for a long time,
Speaker 1: had a bit of family money. Heron said, the fees
Speaker 1: forgetting the education at Norland Institute were beyond most working
Speaker 1: class young women. They were things like a greengrocer's daughter
Speaker 1: or the daughter of people who had their own small business.
Speaker 1: But the tuition was well worth it for those who
Speaker 1: could afford it. In those early years, women who landed
Speaker 1: a nanny position after their training at Norland started with
Speaker 1: salaries around thirty to forty pounds a year, on top
Speaker 1: of having their expenses paid by their employers. It was
Speaker 1: great money, especially for a woman in that place and time.
Speaker 1: As Norland's reputation grew, so did its student body, from
Speaker 1: just a handful of students who studied for a few
Speaker 1: months to today's four year course with graduates earning a
Speaker 1: BA in early childhood, education and care. The things got
Speaker 1: complicated for many of the Norlanders spread across Europe in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, as Heron detailed in her book
Speaker 1: British Nanny's in the Great War, how Norlan's regiment of
Speaker 1: nanny's coped with conflict and childcare in the Great War.
Speaker 1: As she said, for Emily Ward, it was always one
Speaker 1: of her aspirations that she would be placing young women
Speaker 1: in aristocratic families, if not royal families. Very quickly she
Speaker 1: managed to place a couple of girls within the German aristocracy,
Speaker 1: which worked really well until World War One kicked off.
Speaker 1: There was one young lady who managed to look after
Speaker 1: a branch of the imperial family in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 1: When the revolution kicked off in nineteen seventeen, she managed
Speaker 1: to escape with them to Finland, but sadly she died
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineteen influenza epidemic. Through it all, Norland
Speaker 1: carried on with a curriculum designed to produce childcare professionals
Speaker 1: who are equipped to deal with just about anything from
Speaker 1: minor medical mishaps to cooking and nutrition to tutoring Haron
Speaker 1: said they taught the children to read and write, in
Speaker 1: basic arithmetic, singing, piano and other musical instruments. They'd trained
Speaker 1: to deal with children up to the age of quite
Speaker 1: precisely seven years and eleven months. That's because at eight
Speaker 1: most young ladies would be passed to the care of
Speaker 1: a governess and boys would be, as Heron puts it,
Speaker 1: packed off to prep school. Times have changed in lots
Speaker 1: of ways over the years. Other schools with a similar
Speaker 1: model have cropped up. Since twenty fifteen, Norland has accepted
Speaker 1: male students, but Norland leans on its traditions. A Norland
Speaker 1: nanny is easy to spot thanks to the unmistakable uniform,
Speaker 1: a crisp, light brown dress with white trim or beige
Speaker 1: trousers and a tweed blazer, with women often sporting a
Speaker 1: short brimmed brown hat emblazoned with a gold n for
Speaker 1: formal occasions. For the most part, Norland graduates dress in
Speaker 1: more modern clothing after graduation, but sometimes their employer will
Speaker 1: ask them to wear the uniform. Heron said, it's an
Speaker 1: old fashioned uniform. It's traditional. At some point the Princess
Speaker 1: of Wales has asked their nanny to wear a uniform
Speaker 1: on public duty, not always, but at some key events.
Speaker 1: In contrast, the school's curriculum now covers some very modern things,
Speaker 1: the unusual situations that might possibly arise while caring for
Speaker 1: the children of the world's most powerful people. Heron said,
Speaker 1: they do lots of exciting things. There's some self defense.
Speaker 1: They practice a vasive driving or driving in snow, ice
Speaker 1: and fog, difficult conditions, and the nannies leave Norlands classrooms
Speaker 1: having become consummate professionals, thanks in part to the thousands
Speaker 1: of trainees who have come before them. Heron explained a
Speaker 1: think of a parent with a first child, muddling through,
Speaker 1: getting on with it and just occasionally making mistakes. With
Speaker 1: a Norlander that doesn't happen. There have been some seven
Speaker 1: thousand nannies trained since the very first day, and they
Speaker 1: all provide feedback. If they had an issue, they'd write
Speaker 1: the college asking for advice. Sometimes they'd write and say,
Speaker 1: this is how I've dealt with this predicament, and I
Speaker 1: think other nannies ought to know about it. So in
Speaker 1: each Norlander you're looking at nine on seven thousand nannies
Speaker 1: worth of experience. The total fees for the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two to twenty three school year four UK students are
Speaker 1: just over fifteen thousand pounds that's about nineteen thousand American dollars,
Speaker 1: and a Norland nanny can expect to make anywhere in
Speaker 1: the range of thirty two thousand to one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand pounds or more depending on the type
Speaker 1: and location of service. That's around forty to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six thousand American dollars. Every year, about one
Speaker 1: hundred nannies graduate from Norland, but there are some eleven
Speaker 1: open positions for every trained Norland nanny, so graduates are
Speaker 1: very much in demand. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article Norland College where the Royals Find their Nannies on
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Kate Morgan. Brain Stuff is
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