Teacher influenced girls’ education

PIONEERING school principal Isabel Fraser promoted physical fitness as well as academic excellence, Prof Barbara Brookes said this week.

Prof Brookes, of the University of Otago department of history and art history, was talking at the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum about the life and legacy of Miss Fraser.

Addressing more than 50 people, Prof Brookes said Dunedinborn Miss Fraser (18631942) served as principal of Wanganui Girls College, the country’s largest girls’ boarding school, and later became founding principal of the first Presbyterian boarding school for girls, Iona College, at Havelock North.

Like many early women graduates of the University of Otago, Miss Fraser became a teacher, and helped raise the standard of girls’ education in New Zealand.

After earlier being appointed English mistress to Otago Girls’ High School in 1890, in 1894 she took up her appointment in Whanganui, serving there as principal for 17 years.

She promoted not only academic excellence, but also a good, allround education, and introduced teaching in cookery, first aid techniques and dressmaking skills.

An advocate of the benefits of physical exercise, she added several sports and gymnastics to the curriculum, and pupils at the school she led were also taught swimming.

She was the oldest of three sisters, who all achieved academic success, Nellie graduating with honours from the first intake of trainee nurses to Dunedin Hospital, and Kate being appointed one of the first permanent teachers to the Church of Scotland’s mission to Ichang, China.

The talk was the latest in a series on ‘‘Great Scots’’.