Choosing a school

Here is the most important thing to know before you visit any schools, and also the most confusing: the word “Montessori” is not legally protected. In the United States, a 1967 trademark case found that “Montessori” is a generic, descriptive word. No single organisation owns it. Anyone can put the word on a sign. The rules in the UK and EU are less settled, and decided case by case. AMI (see below) owns a logo there, not the word itself. Many unrelated “Montessori”-branded schools exist side by side. In practice, the name on the door tells you almost nothing by itself. What matters is training, affiliation, and what is actually happening in the room.

Disclosure: the author is the chair of the board of a Swedish Montessori school. You can read more in the conflict-of-interest disclosure.

What training and affiliation actually mean

Two organisations provide most formal Montessori teacher training worldwide. They work in genuinely different ways. Neither one is simply “the real one,” with the other being a lesser copy.

AMI (Association Montessori Internationale) is the organisation Montessori herself founded in 1929. It runs one global training plan, with four separate age-specific diplomas: Assistants to Infancy (ages 0–3, around 650 training hours), Early Childhood (3–6, at least 400 hours), Primary/Elementary (6–12, at least 440 hours), and Adolescent (12–18, around 740 hours). Training can take one full academic year, or be spread across summer courses, but it always includes supervised teaching practice in person. This is the closest you can get to training exactly as Montessori designed it.
AMS (American Montessori Society), founded in the US in 1960, takes a more flexible approach: usually one to two years, often mixing in-person and online coursework with a practicum, plus ongoing training (50 hours every five years) to stay active. Rather than one central curriculum, AMS accredits a network of independently run training programmes. This means more variation from one AMS-trained teacher to the next than you would find across AMI.
MACTE (Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education), founded in 1995 in the US, is the recognised body that accredits Montessori teacher-training programmes. Usefully, it accredits programmes linked to AMI, AMS, and other Montessori organisations, not just one. A MACTE-accredited qualification is a reasonable baseline quality signal, and you do not need to take a side between AMI and AMS to use it.

In Sweden specifically, there is also Svenska Montessoriförbundet, the country’s own umbrella body, which runs its national teacher-authorisation exam, NAMEX. It is worth asking about, but it is a separate, Sweden-specific layer, not a stand-in for AMI or AMS training. Since 2024, IMT (Institute of Montessori Training), a US-based provider unrelated to AMI despite the similar-sounding name, has also offered a Swedish-language 3–6 programme with a residency in Malmö; its diploma is MACTE-accredited but follows a different training lineage, through Elizabeth Caspari, than AMI’s. See the Glossary for more on each.

None of this means an unaffiliated school calling itself “Montessori-inspired” is automatically worse. Some are excellent. Some use the name loosely over a fairly ordinary classroom. The label alone cannot tell you which, so the next section matters more than any logo on a website.

What to actually look for on a visit

Ask to watch a working classroom, not just a planned tour. Look for:

Mixed ages in one room: usually a three-year span (3–6, 6–9, or 6–12, and so on), not a single-year group.
Children choosing their own work, from a visible, reachable range of materials, rather than everyone doing the same worksheet at the same time.
A long, uninterrupted work period, often around three hours, where children are not moved between activities by a bell or a fixed timetable.
Calm, purposeful activity: not silence forced from the front of the room, and not chaos either. Real concentration tends to look busy but quiet.
Adults who mostly watch, and sometimes guide one child or a small group, rather than teaching the whole class from the front for most of the day.
Real materials in use, showing wear from actual handling, not beautiful but untouched shelves kept for photos.
Social skills taught directly: how children are shown to solve small conflicts, interrupt politely, or offer help, rather than this being left to an adult stepping in every time.
For older children: trips or projects that leave the classroom to answer a real question (“going out”).

Questions worth asking directly

Which organisation trained the lead teacher, and is the qualification MACTE-accredited?
What is the actual age range and group size in this specific classroom?
How long is the longest uninterrupted work period in a typical day?
How is a child’s progress tracked: through observation and portfolio work, through testing, or both?
What is the policy on worksheets, homework, and screens, especially below age six?
If the school calls itself “Montessori-inspired” rather than AMI- or AMS-affiliated, what does that mean here specifically?
Who legally runs the school, and what kind of organisation is it (public body, company, foundation, non-profit association, or parent cooperative)?

A few honest cautions

How closely a school follows the method varies enormously, by country and by how it is funded. Publicly funded Montessori settings in particular sometimes mix Montessori materials into a more conventional, test-driven structure, and the research evidence for benefit is weaker at this end (see Understanding the Stages). A beautiful set of materials sitting unused is a worse sign than a slightly worn classroom in constant, purposeful use. And no qualification, however good, replaces watching an actual classroom with your own eyes.

How a school is legally run is a separate question from how it is funded. An independent school can be run as a company, a non-profit foundation, a religious trust, or a parent cooperative, where the families themselves are the legal members and are often expected to put in working hours. None of these structures by itself predicts how closely a school follows the method. Ask directly who legally runs the school.

Where this leads next

Once you have found a setting you trust, Montessori at Home covers how to carry the same principles into daily life, and FAQ and Myth-Busting covers the questions and misunderstandings that come up most once a child is enrolled.

Sources consulted: American Montessori Society, Inc. v. Association Montessori Internationale, 155 U.S.P.Q. 591 (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, 1967); AMI course documentation (montessori-ami.org); AMS Teacher Education Program documentation (amshq.org); MACTE, “History and Mission” (macte.org, 2024); montessoriforbundet.se/om-oss and sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svenska_Montessoriförbundet, for Svenska Montessoriförbundet; learn.aimmontessori.org/sweden-imt, for IMT. Simplified from the full-register version of this page; see that page for the complete, unsimplified account.