A little boy's fascination with nature was the catalyst for a pioneering project to transform a primary school in one of the most deprived areas of England into the country's first state-funded Montessori school.
Under the 80,000 initiative, provided by the Montessori St Nicholas Charity and the DfES, the 350-pupil Gorton Mount Primary School in inner-city Manchester began switching to Montessori teaching at the start of last autumn term.
Located in the nation's third poorest ward, it was struggling when headteacher Carol Powell took over three years ago. She was the seventh head in six years, it was under special measures, its pupils spoke 37 different languages and only 18 per cent of them could read at the expected level.
'We did a lot of work on improving discipline, getting rid of poor teachers,' says Ms Powell. Then Jay, who was always escaping to some wasteland beside the school, inspired a major change.
'One day when we brought him back he had some frog spawn with him,' says Ms Powell. 'One of the teaching assistants did a lot of work with him on the life cycle of the frog, and for the first time since I had known him he wanted to learn. I realised the child was directing his own learning.'
Dynamic environment
Once the school had been raised above special measures, Ms Powell looked at child-led learning. She had always liked the Montessori approach and began to investigate the possibilities.
The result is a collaboration with the Montessori St Nicholas Charity, which has seconded a team of four experienced Montessori school heads to the project. Georgina Hood is liaising with parents while Sue Briggs is liaising with the research team from the Institute of Education, who will report on the project in April.
Michelle Wisbey has overseen the transformation of the nursery and foundation stage classrooms to meet the Montessorian principles of order (see box). Sarah Rowledge, head of the Montessori nursery school in Coggeshall has given up her life, her dog and her school for six months to work alongside Gorton Mount's ten nursery and foundation stage staff and train them. From September this year the approach will be introduced into Key Stage One, and then a year later into Key Stage Two.
'As soon as I met Carol I knew I wanted to be part of her vision,' says Ms Rowledge. 'You might have heard about deprivation, social problems and poverty, but it is so very different when you see it for yourself.
'I just want to make everybody aware that Montessori education is not some middle-class education system that is not accessible to the masses. Maria Montessori started working in the most deprived slums in Rome with orphans.'
Training programme
The training began with a seminar for all the school's staff on Maria Montessori's philosophy. 'I had to ask them to put their training aside and listen to me and come to their own conclusions,' says Ms Rowledge. 'All staff members came over to the Montessori approach. One said she had learned more in two days about child development and how to access learning than she had done in all her teacher training.
'People ask why Montessori is so good for these children, but the question should be why is Montessori so good for all children? The simple reason is because it accesses all children. There has to be a correct environment and the dynamic triangle of the adult, the child and the environment.'
The training is ongoing and Ms Powell says staff have had to learn to use Montessori equipment and assimilate it into their teaching. 'It has been very exciting for my teachers,' she says. 'When I listen to them, it is clear they are rediscovering their profession.'
She adds, 'None of them would revert to how they used to work. While all of them say their job satisfaction has escalated, they are finding it exhausting. You are on the move all day and you have to carry in your head where all the children are with their learning.
'With Montessori, the child chooses a piece of equipment and is learning from it. This is very much child-led. You can recognise the stage that each child is operating at and relate their learning to the early learning goals.'
The project has set new targets for the children. This includes increasing the proportion of children reading at or above their expected age level from 47 to 80 per cent.
'This system is good for our children,' says Ms Powell. 'It is secure and orderly. The children who we had last year in nursery who found it very hard to concentrate for long periods of time are now absorbed in what they are doing. It is already very purposeful. It is very calm.
'I watched a boy pouring salt through a funnel from one jar into another and he looked up and said, "Why is it doing that, Miss?" When you think that only one per cent of children typically ask questions about their learning, this is just so exciting. Here was a little boy who was asking questions and had started being interested in the world around him.
'The parents like it. They say the children are much calmer and are becoming more independent. One mother says she noticed at home that her son is putting toys away and tidying up after himself. Part of the Montessori ethos is to put things back for somebody else to use, so you begin to think about others.'
Creating a Montessori environment
'My brief was simple' says Michelle Wisbey, head of Maynard Montessori Pre-School, near Great Dunmow in Essex. 'I had to create a Montessori-prepared environment that the Gorton Mount children would be proud of, care for and respect.
'This had to encompass and embrace all the Montessori areas of learning, including practical life, sensory experiences, mathematics, language and culture. This is designed to help children develop an understanding of complex abstract concepts using concrete learning materials, and all those materials are always accessible.
'Where do you start with a classroom that is chaotic, cluttered and bright orange? Where the furniture and play equipment has seen better days? Even simple things we see every day in state school classrooms, such as displays hanging from the ceiling, detract from rather than promote the learning environment.
'You love to look at the children's work - but so do the children. At Gorton Mount there were tall cupboards that were deemed no-go areas for the children, in a room which should be their own. Children could only access work that the teacher chose.
'We need to put out of our minds the things that would make an environment teacher-friendly and instead create an environment that puts the child's freedom, dignity and independence first.
'Once the builders had completed their work and the decorators had turned bright orange into soft cream, the hard graft began, she says. Floors were scrubbed, carpets were cleaned and the Community Playthings team donated a room full of furniture.
'The well-designed child-height shelving ensures that all the activities can be easily displayed in the correct order of simple to complex, working from left to right and top to bottom, and are easily accessible to the children. All I had to do was fill the shelves with didactic Montessori equipment.
'Artful Dodgers, one of the main suppliers of Montessori material, donated a complete set of equipment for one room, and soon we had a full complement of material.
'We felt that the time, money and effort had been well spent because, as Maria Montessori put it: "Adults admire their environment; they can remember it and think about it - but a child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul".'