WEBVTT - Where Do Royalty's Nannies Get Their Training? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff. Lauren 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:12.440 vogelban here. If you follow the British royal family, you 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.760 may have noticed that when its youngest members appear in public, 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.520 they're often accompanied by a neatly dressed nanny wearing a 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.560 tan uniform and maybe a brown hat. A childcareb is 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.079 always a rigorous job with lots to learn about, but 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.320 these nannies have received a particular education at Norland College, 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.120 an academy that trains the nannies of the world's wealthiest families. 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.320 A formal childcare education is a relatively new phenomenon for 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.760 the article. This episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:46.279 with social historian doctor Louise Heron. She said Britain and 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.680 most European countries had some form of children's nurse, but 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:52.239 they would learn on the job, so you could go 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:54.760 from being a scullery maid to getting bumped up to 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.319 lower nurserymaid and then eventually one day you might make 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:03.200 children's nurse and be looking at the family. This would 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.480 change in England in eighteen ninety two when a primary 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.880 school teacher named Emily Ward saw an opportunity. Heron said 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.959 she realized that the nurses and nursery maids were all uneducated. 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:17.840 She thought that there was a business opportunity in training 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.920 children's nurses who could both raise and educate the next 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:26.280 generation of our upper classes. Ward founded Norland College in Bath, England, 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:30.280 and at first the training program only lasted a few months. Still, 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:32.720 the cost to attend was a bit steep. The women 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.320 who enrolled, and it was only women for a long time, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.040 had a bit of family money. Heron said, the fees 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.200 forgetting the education at Norland Institute were beyond most working 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.520 class young women. They were things like a greengrocer's daughter 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:47.960 or the daughter of people who had their own small business. 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:51.040 But the tuition was well worth it for those who 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.920 could afford it. In those early years, women who landed 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.480 a nanny position after their training at Norland started with 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.160 salaries around thirty to forty pounds a year, on top 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.800 of having their expenses paid by their employers. It was 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.840 great money, especially for a woman in that place and time. 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.440 As Norland's reputation grew, so did its student body, from 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:12.440 just a handful of students who studied for a few 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.680 months to today's four year course with graduates earning a 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:20.799 BA in early childhood, education and care. The things got 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.720 complicated for many of the Norlanders spread across Europe in 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.720 the early twentieth century, as Heron detailed in her book 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:29.760 British Nanny's in the Great War, how Norlan's regiment of 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:32.600 nanny's coped with conflict and childcare in the Great War. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.720 As she said, for Emily Ward, it was always one 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.080 of her aspirations that she would be placing young women 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:43.160 in aristocratic families, if not royal families. Very quickly she 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.160 managed to place a couple of girls within the German aristocracy, 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.160 which worked really well until World War One kicked off. 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.080 There was one young lady who managed to look after 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:55.040 a branch of the imperial family in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.600 When the revolution kicked off in nineteen seventeen, she managed 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.400 to escape with them to Finland, but sadly she died 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:07.160 in the nineteen nineteen influenza epidemic. Through it all, Norland 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:10.720 carried on with a curriculum designed to produce childcare professionals 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.440 who are equipped to deal with just about anything from 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.440 minor medical mishaps to cooking and nutrition to tutoring Haron 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.000 said they taught the children to read and write, in 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.280 basic arithmetic, singing, piano and other musical instruments. They'd trained 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.160 to deal with children up to the age of quite 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:32.400 precisely seven years and eleven months. That's because at eight 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:34.480 most young ladies would be passed to the care of 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.080 a governess and boys would be, as Heron puts it, 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:42.760 packed off to prep school. Times have changed in lots 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.800 of ways over the years. Other schools with a similar 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.480 model have cropped up. Since twenty fifteen, Norland has accepted 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:54.520 male students, but Norland leans on its traditions. A Norland 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.680 nanny is easy to spot thanks to the unmistakable uniform, 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.280 a crisp, light brown dress with white trim or beige 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.360 trousers and a tweed blazer, with women often sporting a 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.320 short brimmed brown hat emblazoned with a gold n for 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:11.280 formal occasions. For the most part, Norland graduates dress in 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.920 more modern clothing after graduation, but sometimes their employer will 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.600 ask them to wear the uniform. Heron said, it's an 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.279 old fashioned uniform. It's traditional. At some point the Princess 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.600 of Wales has asked their nanny to wear a uniform 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.960 on public duty, not always, but at some key events. 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:33.320 In contrast, the school's curriculum now covers some very modern things, 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.120 the unusual situations that might possibly arise while caring for 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.760 the children of the world's most powerful people. Heron said, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.839 they do lots of exciting things. There's some self defense. 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.919 They practice a vasive driving or driving in snow, ice 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:52.840 and fog, difficult conditions, and the nannies leave Norlands classrooms 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.600 having become consummate professionals, thanks in part to the thousands 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.160 of trainees who have come before them. Heron explained a 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.720 think of a parent with a first child, muddling through, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.960 getting on with it and just occasionally making mistakes. With 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:08.799 a Norlander that doesn't happen. There have been some seven 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.480 thousand nannies trained since the very first day, and they 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.360 all provide feedback. If they had an issue, they'd write 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.520 the college asking for advice. Sometimes they'd write and say, 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:19.240 this is how I've dealt with this predicament, and I 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.120 think other nannies ought to know about it. So in 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.240 each Norlander you're looking at nine on seven thousand nannies 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:30.280 worth of experience. The total fees for the twenty twenty 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.800 two to twenty three school year four UK students are 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.360 just over fifteen thousand pounds that's about nineteen thousand American dollars, 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.120 and a Norland nanny can expect to make anywhere in 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.320 the range of thirty two thousand to one hundred and 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.240 twenty four thousand pounds or more depending on the type 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.920 and location of service. That's around forty to one hundred 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:51.440 and fifty six thousand American dollars. Every year, about one 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.520 hundred nannies graduate from Norland, but there are some eleven 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.440 open positions for every trained Norland nanny, so graduates are 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:05.720 very much in demand. Today's episode is based on the 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.760 article Norland College where the Royals Find their Nannies on 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.000 HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Kate Morgan. Brain Stuff is 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.680 production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.600 and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.080 iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:22.400 listen to your favorite shows.