No smoking, no slouching, no jewellery – life is tough at Norland College, the elite training centre for nannies in the British town of Bath. But those who make the cut are rewarded for their efforts with lucrative employment by celebrities – and even royalty.
By Silvia Kusidlo
In their calf-length beige dresses, tights, brown brogues, gloves and little brown bowler hats, they look like something straight out of the 1950s.
Graduates of Norland College are widely known as “super nannies” and, like their fictional counterpart Mary Poppins, they are quintessentially British.
Drawing on a 125-year heritage, the prestigious institution in Bath has provided minders for children of the rich and famous, including Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall – and for royalty, too.
In 2014, when Britain’s Prince George was 8 months old, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, appointed Norland-trained nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo to look after him.
Slender, eschewing make-up and described as very serious, 40-something Borrallo comes from a well-off Spanish family in Palencia, north of Madrid, and is the epitome of a Norland nanny.
In a Norland class for first-year students, young women are sitting in groups, their backs perfectly straight, and discussing – smiling all the while – the expectations their future employers might have of them. The teacher sternly tells one of them that the collar on her blouse is askew.
The list of rules is long. Only one pair of small plain stud earrings is to be worn, visible body piercings or tattoos are unacceptable, wristwatches aren’t allowed, hair is to be cut or clipped/tied back off the collar in a bun and out of the eyes, make-up – if used – must be discreet, and smoking isn’t permitted anywhere in the college building or grounds, or when the student is in uniform.
Whenever wearing the uniform – which must always be clean, tidy and ironed – students must not chew gum, listen to music using headphones, consume food or drink while walking around, buy fast food or eat in a fast food restaurant, or use a mobile phone while walking in the street.
Why would a modern young woman put up with all of that? “I want to work in different countries,” says 20-year-old Libby. With Norland’s heavily practice-oriented training, she says, she’ll be in demand worldwide.
Charles, 19, is one of Norland’s seven male students, or prospective “mannies.” “I’d like to work in London [first] and then travel around the world,” he says. Do his friends tease him about his choice of occupation? “They’re proud of me and impressed that I’m doing this.”
Founded in 1892 by Emily Ward as the Training School for Ladies as Children’s Nurses at Norland Place in London, the college moved to numerous locations before coming to Bath in south-west England in 2003. Built on natural hot springs by the Romans, the elegant spa town is a Unesco World Heritage site.
Norland’s nannies are special, too. They’re taught to take responsibility for every aspect of a child’s well-being, care and development, including cooking, cleaning and laundry – but only for the child.
Ward is said to have given each Norlander the following advice before they graduated: “Put a silver-backed hairbrush on your dressing table when you arrive. That way, you won’t be taken for one of the servants.”
Along with mundane skills such as sewing and nappy-changing, the curriculum now extends to safe driving in difficult conditions, cybercrime prevention and self-defence against kidnappers. “As we say in jest: Mary Poppins meets James Bond,” remarks the college’s principal, Janet Rose.
In a Norland cooking class, Emily, a 23-year-old Englishwoman, is learning to prepare Thai prawn curry and gluten-free dishes. She’s wearing a blue polo shirt and blue trousers – Norland’s “practical uniform” – and seems more mature than some of the others.
“I cared for two children for a long time on a New Zealand sheep farm and have worked in summer camps in the US,” she says. Why is she at Norland? “It’s important for me to graduate. I want to start a nursery school.”
Alice, 22, has set her sights elsewhere. “Going to businesspeople in Switzerland would be nice,” she says.
“Each graduate gets six job offers on average,” according to Rose. While “we would never talk about our clients,” she says they include doctors, actors and entrepreneurs from as far afield as the US, China, the Caribbean and Dubai.
Some graduates, she adds, end up earning a salary of more than 90,000 pounds sterling (about 120,000 US dollars). “Sometimes they also receive extras such as use of a flat for themselves or an annual pass for a health club.”
But first the students, 90 per cent of whom are British, have to pay. First-year tuition fees for a September 2018 entry will be 14,487 pounds, with increases of up to 5 per cent for each succeeding year in the three-year course.
The cost of the uniform – summer and winter versions differ – is about 800 pounds. A limited number of grants are available towards meeting tuition fees. Upon completion of the course, the newly qualified nannies spend a year with a British family in paid employment arranged by Norland staff.
Things don’t always go smoothly. Some of the nannies or mannies get homesick, while others have problems with their employers. Working overtime is customary. Those guilty of misconduct have to turn in their uniform and are stricken forever from the Norland register.
Otherwise, a school staffer says, “When you’re part of Norland, it’s for a lifetime.” Alumni regularly gather for reunions from around the world – and assuredly have lots of interesting tales to tell. – DPA
AT WORK: Emily is a student at Norland College.
