What is Montessori education?
Montessori is the best-known name in alternative schooling, and any school is free to use it. Two schools with the same word on the door can be very different places.
Here's what the method is, and what to look at when you tour one.
Where it came from
Maria Montessori was an Italian physician who opened her first classroom in Rome in 1907, working with children in a poor district of the city. The method came out of watching what they did when they were left to choose their own work, and it spread worldwide in her lifetime.
What a classroom looks like
Children of a three-year age range share a room, so a five-year-old and a three-year-old work alongside each other. A long uninterrupted work period, often close to three hours, replaces a schedule of short periods.
The materials are the method. Specific wooden and metal objects, each teaching one idea, are laid out on open shelves and a child chooses what to take. A teacher presents a material once and then steps back, and the child repeats it as many times as they want to.
Practical life comes first in the early years: pouring, sweeping, doing up buttons, laying a table. It looks like housework. It's teaching sequence, concentration and control of the hand.
Why quality varies
The name is not trademarked. Any school anywhere can call itself Montessori, and many do with none of the training or materials behind it.
What separates them is accreditation. AMI, which Montessori founded herself, and AMS are the international bodies. In Canada it's Montessori Canada, which went by the CCMA until 2025 and reaccredits its schools every five years. Ask which one a school holds and where its teachers trained, because Montessori teacher training is its own qualification.
Ask about ages too. Most Montessori settings in Ontario are preschool and casa, roughly two and a half to six. Elementary Montessori exists, and it's much less common.
Where we're similar, and where we're not
We share the part most parents come to Montessori for: a child is taught what they're ready for and moves on once they've got it, instead of moving with a class.
We're not a Montessori school, we don't use the materials, and we hold no affiliation with any Montessori body. Reading, writing, mathematics, science, history and geography are taught by a teacher, deliberately, to a high standard, and a good part of the day is spent outside.
Money and business, engineering, the outdoors, and health, nutrition and fitness are on our schedule as subjects of their own.
Questions about Montessori
Is Montessori only for preschool?
No. Montessori designed a full sequence through the elementary years and beyond, but in Ontario most schools using the name run preschool and casa programs for roughly two and a half to six year olds. Elementary Montessori is far less common, which is why families often go looking again around Grade 1.
Can any school call itself Montessori?
Yes. A 1967 ruling put the name in the public domain, so it carries no guarantee on its own. Accreditation from AMI, AMS or Montessori Canada is what tells you the training and the materials are real, and it's a fair thing to ask about on a tour.
Is The Galt Academy a Montessori school?
No. We share individual pacing and nothing else about the method, and we have no affiliation with any Montessori organisation.