Feeding, bathing and martial arts? The all-round training needed to care for an heir
Renee Filippone | CBC News | Posted: September 23, 2016 10:57 AM | Last Updated: September 25, 2016
A royal nanny needs to know more than bedtime stories, and U.K.'s Norland College is the place to learn it all
"So that's the tagliatelle."
The nutrition teacher rolls out pasta dough and walks a group of young women through the steps to make handmade pasta.
This isn't the Kraft Dinner most of us grew up on. This is what the U.K.'s best-trained nannies are taught to make their future wards.
Norland College in Bath, about 185 kilometres west of London, was founded in 1892 and is considered one of the world's most prestigious schools for nannies. It's a three-year program and annual tuition is nearly $24,000 Cdn. Graduates work for some of the most posh and high-end families in the world.
Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo was trained at Norland, and today she is on her way to Canada.
Her charges are Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the heir and spare to the British throne. She'll be travelling with the children and Prince William and Kate, and caring for the tots at Government House in Victoria, B.C., while their parents shake hands and cut ribbons during their eight-day visit to B.C. and the Yukon.
"I am not able to comment at all on any of our clients," says Norland principal Janet Rose, who won't bite when asked about the Royal Family, despite the fact that Borrallo was pictured in the school's iconic traditional brown uniform at the christening of Princess Charlotte.
Having a degree from Norland means you are not only trained to change nappies and help nurture young minds, but you also learn martial arts and defensive driving, and soon her pupils will be trained by former military intelligence personnel. Although Borrallo's wage isn't publicly known, Norland graduates tend to make an annual salary of between $60,000 and $100,000, according to the school, with nannies working overseas making about $127,000.
"We do equip them with an extraordinary range of very useful, practical skills that will enable them to manage and cope with particular working environments that perhaps operate a little bit outside the norm of a normal, hard working family," says Rose.
"We have to do self-defence with a child," says Hannah Boyle, a nanny in training. "You have to hold onto the buggy and fight off attackers. It just seems really fun and actually you might have to use that, so it's good that they prepare us for those kinds of situations."
Need for a nanny
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge originally said they were not going to have a nanny. But soon after George was born in July 2013, they changed their minds. According to experts, they interviewed a number of people before picking Borrallo.
"When it goes well, you can't over stress the importance of nannies," says royal commentator Roya Nikkhah. "When it doesn't go well and they speak out of turn, they are dispatched pretty quickly."
Nannies were a major part of William and Prince Harry's childhood, Nikkhah says, especially during their parents' divorce. William dropped everything to be at one of his caretakers' funerals a couple of years ago.
Feels like Downton Abbey
The women attending Norland show up to class every day dressed in traditional uniform. Brown shoes, brown dress with a hat tipped forward, they exude Mary Poppins. It seems a bit odd, to a Canadian, a little Downton Abbey. For the students here, the pomp and circumstance is all about pride.
When student Hannah Boyle saw Borrallo wearing the Norland uniform, she understood why.
"These are our formal uniforms; she did that at a formal occasion," Boyle says. "It's what I kind of want to do in the future. If we have to do a formal occasion with our families then I will wear this."
It's all about the kids
College staff work to downplay the glitz and glam of it all. Rose says it's all about the children.
"The motto for the college is, 'Love never faileth,' she says "So in that respect, it's more than just … there is a sense of a calling to it."
Scarlett Ward, 22, is in her last year at Norland and says her motivation is simple.
"I don't think we aspire to work for a certain type of family I think as long as we are happy and the family is happy with us. I think that's all we really want."