Product Code Database
Frances Mary Buss (16 August 1827 – 24 December 1894) was a British headmistress and a pioneer of girls' education.
Her father's career as an artist being at times unsuccessful, to help the family finances her mother set up a private school in Clarence Road, Kentish Town, in 1845, at which Frances assisted,Kamm, Josephine 'How Different From Us: A Biography of Miss Buss and Miss Beale' London: The Bodley Head (1958) and which was based on the ideas of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
During 1848–9, she attended evening lectures at the newly opened Queen's College in Harley Street, London. She was taught by F. D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and R. C. Trench, and gained certificates in French, German and Geography. To Dorothea Beale, a contemporary at Queen's, she described the education she had gained there as opening 'a new life to me, I mean intellectually'.Buss to Beale, 13 January 1889, North London Collegiate School archives
In July 1870 Frances Mary Buss handed over the school to trustees, and in the following year she founded the Camden School for Girls with the aim of offering more affordable education for girls. She was the first person to use the title Headmistress.'The North London Collegiate School 1850–1950: A Hundred Years of Girls' Education' Published by Oxford University Press (1950)
Buss was at the forefront of campaigns for the endowment of girls' schools (see Endowed Schools Act 1869), and for girls to be allowed to sit public examinations and to enter universities. She became the founding president of the Association of Head Mistresses in 1874, a position she held until 1894,Dictionary of British Educationists By Richard Aldrich and Peter Gordon Published by Routledge (1989) and she was also involved in establishing the Teachers' Guild in 1883 and the Cambridge Training College (later Hughes Hall) for training teachers in 1885.
In 1869 she became the first woman Fellow of the College of Preceptors, helping to establish the College's professorship of the science and art of education along with her co-fellow Beata Doreck in 1872. Her election to a Fellowship of the College in 1873 was the only public recognition she ever received.College of Teachers' Archive She was also a member of the Council of the Teachers' Training and Registration Society.
Buss was also a suffragist, participating in the Kensington Society, a woman's discussion society, and the London Suffrage Committee.
She is buried in the churchyard of Theydon Bois in Essex.
Miss Buss and Miss Beale, Cupid's darts do not feel. How different from us, Miss Beale and Miss Buss.
In the spring of each year North London Collegiate School, North London Collegiate School Jeju (in South Korea), North London Collegiate School Dubai (in United Arab Emirates), North London Collegiate School (Singapore), North London Collegiate School Ho Chi Minh City (in Vietnam) and Camden School for Girls all hold Founder's Day to commemorate Frances Mary Buss and her legacy. Pupils, staff and guests each carry a daffodil in memory of Miss Buss's favourite flower.
The educational values that Frances Mary Buss taught at the North London Collegiate School became the model for many schools throughout the UK and overseas. This included Bournemouth's Talbot Heath School started by Mary Broad and Pretoria High School for Girls, founded in South Africa by Edith Aitken, a former pupil of Miss Buss.
|
|
