Montessori schools in Ireland

Ireland's first Montessori “children's house” opened in Waterford in March 1920: Mother De Sales Lowry, superior of the Mercy convent, brought the method into the junior section of St Otteran's, a school that was free for the children of the area, and sent two of its teachers to train in London. One of them, Sister Gertrude Allman, was among the first to adapt the Montessori materials to the teaching of Irish, a compulsory subject in the country's schools. In June 1926 W. B. Yeats, then a senator and a member of a government committee on education, visited the school, and the visit gave rise to his poem “Among School Children”. Maria Montessori came to Ireland for the first time on 27 June 1927, and St Otteran's was the first place she visited. Beyond Waterford the method was slow to take root: in 1952 Veronica Ryan, who had trained with Maria Montessori, opened the Children's House in Stillorgan, south of Dublin, the first school in the country built for the method, and from 1971 the St Nicholas Montessori Society of Ireland ran diploma courses in Dublin, so teachers no longer had to go to London to train. Today “Montessori” is used in Ireland almost as a byword for preschool, and the name alone says nothing about whether a setting follows the method; few schools go on to primary. The Association of AMI Teachers in Ireland (AATI), which brings together teachers with an AMI diploma, is the country's AMI affiliated society.