Montessori education is not a teaching method. It is a way of understanding how children learn, and creating an environment where that learning happens naturally.
Developed by Dr Maria Montessori in the early 1900s, the approach has been refined over more than a century of practice and is now used in thousands of schools across the world. At its heart is a simple observation: children have a natural desire to learn. When given the right environment, the right materials and the freedom to follow their curiosity, they thrive.
The Prepared Environment
Every Montessori classroom is a prepared environment, a carefully designed space where everything has a purpose and a place. Materials are accessible at child height, activities build on each other progressively, and the classroom is calm, ordered and beautiful. Children choose their own work and stay with it for as long as they need to.
Mixed-Age Groupings
Montessori classrooms group children across three year age spans rather than single year levels. Younger children learn by watching older ones, and older children develop leadership and empathy by helping younger ones. It mirrors how learning happens in the real world.
Child-Led Learning
The teacher is a guide, not a lecturer. Children select their own work from a range of purposefully designed activities. This is not free play. It is structured freedom: children work within a prepared environment with clear boundaries, choosing the what while the teacher makes sure the how is always developmentally appropriate.
The Four Planes of Development
Dr Montessori observed that children develop in four distinct stages, each with its own characteristics and needs. The first, from birth to six, is the absorbent mind, when children take in everything around them almost effortlessly. The second, from six to twelve, is the reasoning mind, when children want to know why. Montessori classrooms are built around these stages rather than around year levels, which is why our classes span three years and why a child’s learning plan follows their development rather than their birthday.
The Work Cycle
Montessori classrooms protect a long, uninterrupted block of work time each morning. Children are not moved from subject to subject on a bell. Given that stretch of time, they settle into deep concentration, and it is in that concentration that the real learning happens.
Montessori and Academic Achievement
A common question from parents is whether Montessori children keep up academically. The research is encouraging. A 2006 study published in the journal Science compared children who won places in a Montessori school by random lottery with those who did not, and found the Montessori group scored higher on both academic and behavioural measures. A larger randomised trial published in 2025 followed 588 children across 24 public Montessori schools and found significantly better outcomes at the end of kindergarten in reading, memory, executive function and social understanding.
Both studies focus on the early years and were run overseas, so they are useful context rather than a promise about any individual child. What they support is the broader picture: Montessori children hold their own academically, and tend to do particularly well on the things that are harder to test, like concentration, independence and getting along with others.
At Southside Montessori, our Lower and Upper Primary programs are registered with NESA and deliver the NSW curriculum outcomes, integrated with the Montessori National Curriculum (2025), recognised by ACARA in December 2025 and aligned with Australian Curriculum v9.
About Dr Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori (1870 to 1952) was an Italian physician and educator who developed the Montessori method through careful scientific observation of children. She was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Italy, and went on to open her first Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House, in Rome in 1907. Her work with children in disadvantaged communities led her to discover that, when given a prepared environment and freedom within structure, children taught themselves.
Her approach spread rapidly across Europe and the world, and today there are more than 22,000 Montessori schools globally. The Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), founded by Dr Montessori herself, sets the international standard for authentic Montessori practice, the standard to which Southside Montessori is committed.