About The Montessori World
The Montessori World is an international directory of Montessori schools. It gathers schools from different countries and lets you search them by city or by country, see the stages and languages they offer, visit their website and read what each school publishes about the way it works.
Why this directory exists
The Montessori World has three aims.
The first is to help families find a Montessori school in their area, or wherever they move to.
The second is to show the real scale of the Montessori movement internationally: how many schools there are, which countries they are in, what ages they serve and what languages they work in.
And the third is to make that information available to researchers, journalists and anyone else interested in Montessori education, with data that can be compared across countries and that is reachable by search and analysis tools too.
The project has only just begun, and we are still a long way from reaching every Montessori school that exists. We see it as long-term work: a map that will keep growing and correcting itself over time. That is why we decided to make it public from the start, so that we can widen it with the help of the schools themselves and of the Montessori community.
A map under construction
There is no single source that tells you how many Montessori schools there are in the world, or how they are spread across countries, stages and languages. Many schools — especially small ones, state-funded ones, or those outside the big cities — barely appear in international directories. We want those less visible schools to appear too, because without them the map does not reflect what the Montessori movement really is.
A site for finding out what lies behind the word Montessori
The name Montessori is used in very different ways. Some schools follow Maria Montessori's proposal closely; others take some of her materials or principles into more conventional educational models.
From the outside it is not always easy to know what lies behind a word that appears on a website, a sign or a leaflet.
That is why we have defined a set of criteria that help you form a first idea of how a school works: what its environments are like, what training its guides have, how the ages are grouped, how much autonomous work time the children have, and what place is given to grades, rewards, punishments and homework.
On the criteria page we explain which aspects can be observed during a visit and which are worth asking the school about directly.
Information that comes from the schools
When a school manages its own profile, it is the school that supplies and updates the information. Those profiles carry the mark "Data provided by the school".
Other profiles we prepare ourselves, from public sources and from the information available on the school's website. We want the directory to be useful even when a school has not registered yet. In those cases we say so clearly too, and any school can claim its profile, correct it and take it over.
Every profile shows when its details were last updated. If a year goes by without them being reviewed, we say so, so families know it is worth confirming them with the school directly.
If you find a mistake, an out-of-date detail or a school that no longer exists, you can tell us from the profile itself.
What this directory does not do
The Montessori World does not certify or inspect schools. Nor does it draw up rankings or decide which schools are better.
We publish the information each school states about itself and check it, where possible, against the public information available. The criteria are there to orient you and to help you ask better questions.
And a profile never replaces a visit. A school may meet a given set of conditions and still not be the right one for a particular family. The relationship with the people who work there, the atmosphere you breathe and the children's day-to-day experience are things you can only know by being there.
What it costs
Having a profile on The Montessori World costs the school nothing. Appearing, claiming an existing profile and keeping it current are all free.
For families the directory is free to use, and no account is needed to browse it.
Who is behind it
themontessori.world is operated by LIGHTHOUSES, S.C.P., tax ID J55213292, registered at Avenida de España, 44, 28213 Colmenar del Arroyo (Madrid), Spain.
Write to us at info@themontessori.world or from the contact page. We answer families, schools and anyone who finds something wrong in a profile.
The terms of use are in the terms and conditions, and how we handle personal data is in the privacy policy.