People Australia

Bessie Mitchell, c.1970s

Supplied by Cheltenham Girls' High School

Bessie Mitchell (1906-1998) teacher, headmistress and trade union official

Birth: 22 April 1906 at Enfield, Sydney, New South Wales, fourth of five daughters of English-born parents George Mitchell (1866-1949) a butter merchant and storekeeper from London, and Helen, née Wilding (1869-1942), from Birmingham. Unmarried. Death: 4 September 1998 at Hornsby, NSW. 

• She was educated at Burwood Superior Public School and on a bursary from 1919 to Sydney Girls’ High School, where she won the Fairfax prize. She then attended the University of Sydney (B.A. — with Honours in French, German and Latin).
• After teacher training she was posted to Bathurst High School and later taught at Tamworth, Maitland and at Crown Street, Sydney.
• She became active in the Secondary Teachers Association (STA) in 1942 and was involved in a successful campaign of opposition to the new secondary syllabi, becoming one of a new group of STA representatives on departmental committees.
• Mitchell was elected STA representative on the council of the New South Wales Teachers Federation in 1952. She was a member of the executives of the STA and the NSW Teachers’ Federation in 1953.
• She was STA vice-president, then the association's first woman president, holding office for six years. Self-described as a radical conservative, defending the interests of secondary teachers and opposed to any party political alignment of the federation, she worked to prevent a split in the federation during the turbulent 1950s and early 1960s and spoke out in support of equal pay and over the Lewis case.
• Served as federation trustee or vice-president for many years. She was an effective spokesperson for the federation on many occasions; served on most federation committees; represented the federation at the 1959 Australian Council of Trade Unions Congress.
• She was a member of the first federation delegation to the Soviet Union in 1963. She gave evidence before the NSW Industrial Commission hearing in 1969, which resulted in a ten percent salary increase for all teachers. She was awarded Active Life membership of the federation.
• She was a strong supporter of public education; a founding member of the Council of Australian College of Education, she was made a fellow of the college in 1963; a member of the Secondary Schools Board. Chairperson of the Board of Stewart House for ten years. She established the Modern Language Teachers Association.
• Mitchell was founding principal of Cheltenham Girls High School in 1957, retaining the position until her retirement in 1970.
• She was appointed MBE in June 1971. 

Sources
Education (Sydney), 9 October 1953,7 October 1959, 22 June 1960, 2 June 1965, 9 June 1976; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 1998; John O'Brien, A Divided Unity! Politics of NSW Teacher Militancy since 1945 (Sydney, 1987) pp 84, 86-97; interview in 1995 by Tony Ryan at National Library of Australia Oral History project.