Australian Dictionary of Biography

Bessie Mitchell, c.1970s

Supplied by Cheltenham Girls' High School

Bessie Mitchell (1906–1998), headmistress and teachers’ representative, was born on 23 April 1906 at Strathfield, Sydney, youngest of five daughters of English-born parents George Mitchell, collector and storekeeper, and his wife Helen, née Wilding. Bess’s family lived in the suburb of Enfield. Both parents were devoted Methodists: George was a preacher at the Enfield Methodist Church and Helen was a long-serving member of the church choir. While both parents ‘believed in education’ for their daughters, Bessie remarked in later life that her mother was ‘a woman ahead of her time’ because she was determined her daughters would ‘be independent and have a job … that would keep them, and they weren’t to have to go and get married because they had to have somebody to … sustain them’ (Mitchell 1995).

After attending Burwood Superior Public School, Mitchell entered Sydney Girls’ High School in 1919, having won a bursary. As well as becoming a senior prefect and editor of the school journal, she topped each of her high school years. This culminated in her gaining the top pass in the New South Wales Leaving certificate in 1923 with four first-class honours and two A-passes. In 1924 the University of Sydney (BA, 1927) awarded her the James Aitken scholarship, the John West medal, the Grahame prize medal for general proficiency, and the coveted Fairfax prize for general proficiency among female candidates. She also won a university bursary and a public exhibition, and went on to graduate with honours in French, German, and Latin, before gaining her diploma of education at Sydney Teachers’ College. She stated in 1995 that she had ‘always [aimed] to be a teacher’ (Mitchell 1995).

In 1928 Mitchell began her teaching career at Sutherland Intermediate High School, where she was appointed for only four months before being transferred to Bathurst High School in April. Describing herself then as ‘shy,’ she remembered being ‘well looked after’ (Mitchell 1995) by two senior female teachers, even learning to play bridge. After teaching at Tamworth High (1929–30), West Maitland Girls’ High (1931–33), Crown Street Girls’ Intermediate High (1934–35), and Hornsby Girls’ High schools (1936), she returned to her alma mater, Sydney Girls’ High, where she taught from mid-1936 until the end of 1940, and again from 1943 to 1947. Between these stints at Sydney Girls’ High, she taught at Newcastle Girls’ High School from 1941 to 1942, returning there as subject mistress of modern languages in 1948 until November 1949. At both schools she taught alongside the author Dymphna Cusack. She retained her position as subject mistress at her next posting to Fort Street Girls’ High School from the end of 1949 until 1953. Her next appointments were as deputy headmistress, first at Marrickville Girls’ Junior High School (1954), and then Sydney Girls’ High, this time from the end of 1954 until the start of 1958.

By then at the apex of her teaching career, in 1958 Mitchell was appointed foundation headmistress of a new comprehensive girls’ high school at leafy Cheltenham, Sydney. While having ‘never thought’ she would ‘eventually become a head,’ she later came to the view that the then director-general of education in New South Wales, Harold Wyndham, ‘had always intended that I should go to Cheltenham’ (Mitchell 1995). The thirteen years there proved exciting and presented many new challenges. Under her leadership Cheltenham Girls’ High went from being ‘half finished’ to ‘a model school’ (Phelan 1976, 159). She sought to enact her educational philosophy that ‘schools belonged to the children,’ concluding later that ‘we managed to found or make a very happy cohesive school’ (Mitchell 1995).

Mitchell’s career as a teacher and headmistress constituted only part of her many educational activities. As a prominent member of the New South Wales Public School Teachers’ Federation (later the New South Wales Teachers’ Federation), she played a significant role in the campaigns to improve teacher salaries and working conditions, including the successful fight for equal pay, greater opportunity for teachers in promotion, and better funding for education. Representing the Secondary Teachers’ Association of New South Wales, she was on the State Teachers’ Federation council from 1952, and a trustee from 1954. During these years she joined a growing number of women who contested senior leadership positions inside the federation. In 1959 she ran for deputy president against the popular Sam Lewis, gaining 6,105 votes to Lewis’s 7,737. While some saw her as a leader of the right-wing faction in the federation, she saw herself as a ‘radical conservative’ (Phelan 1976, 159). She was made a life member in 1963.

During her involvement in the Teachers’ Federation, Mitchell honed her skills as a committee woman and public speaker, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s attended national education and Australian Council of Trade Union conferences. In 1962 she and two others formed a delegation to the World Federation of Scientific Workers Symposium on Higher Education in Moscow. Following the conference, they travelled to Sweden and Britain, where she investigated the teaching of languages. By the time she became vice president of the State branch of the federation in 1965, she had been heavily involved in the Secondary Teachers’ Association since 1942, holding various executive positions, including as president for six years from 1958.

Aside from these activities, Mitchell was a member of the Modern Language Association of New South Wales. There she was a vocal advocate for reform in the method of teaching languages, having during her study tour in 1962 studied the new audiovisual methods that encouraged oral fluency. She worked on the new syllabus for French that incorporated culture as well as language. Further, due to her skills in chairing meetings, she was made president of the Girls’ Secondary Schools Sports Association. Her ability to keep ‘the thing going and sane’ was described by one member as being akin to ‘the touch of garlic that made the whole dish work’ (Mitchell 1995). She was also involved in the formation of the Australian College of Education; she would become a fellow in 1963. For ten years she chaired the board of Stewart House, overseeing a range of physical, educational, and staffing improvements.

Following her retirement from the State teaching service in February 1971, Mitchell was appointed MBE. She did not rest on her laurels, moving into the Retired Teachers’ Association, and maintaining her contact with teaching by acting as a liaison for the nine hundred students in the diploma of education at the University of Sydney. A woman of vast energy, charm, modesty, and intelligence, she was of medium build with an open, welcoming face, even features, and magnetic eyes. She was remembered by her former pupil Dame Marie Bashir as an exemplary teacher of French who was ‘kind and inspirational’ (Ridgway 2018, 7). For her part, Mitchell was surprised by such praise because she never ‘struck’ herself ‘as being anything special’ (Mitchell 1995). She died on 4 September 1998 at Wahroonga, and was cremated; she had never married. A fountain donated by the school’s students was erected in the inner courtyard at Cheltenham Girls’ High in 1970.