Mary Valentine Gutteridge

Mary Valentine Gutteridge (February 14, 1887 – June 15, 1962) was an Australian educationalist and kindergarten principal. She is creditted as "the founder in Australia of the nursery school system".

Life Gutteridge was born in 1887 in Tasmania at Launceston. She was the first of five children born to Mary Kate (born Penney) and her husband Matthew Wilkins Gutteridge. After her four brothers were born, the family moved, so that her father could practice at Melbourne's Homoeopathic Hospital. Her brothers were to be doctors and engineers.

In 1911 she was back in Melbourne where she led the junior section of the Girls Grammar School

In 1937 she published Concentration in Young Children and in the following year she is recorded with a similarly titled book The Duration of Attention in Young Children. In 1941 she joined the Merrill Palmer School in Detroit. In 1939 Columbia University received her ...Study of Motor Achievements of Young Children.

Death and legacy In 1950 the Mary Gutteridge Lectures began, organised by the Kindergarten Training College Graduates Association. Gutteridge is creditted as "the founder in Australia of the nursery school system". She retired to Brisbane in 1952, but she continued to take an interest in the subject. She died in Wavell Heights in 1962.