The Hong Kong Montessori Conference 2016

In what was both a celebration and an exciting opportunity to educate parents, teachers and school executives on what is one of the fastest-growing systems of education in the world, The Global Citizen Hong Kong Montessori Conference took place at the International Montessori School (IMS) in Stanley Market from October 7-8. The event featured over 300 delegates from 30 different countries, as well as dozens of informative workshops which catered to specific questions and needs regarding Montessori education.

“Montessori is the opposite of the way most schools operate,” says Tim Seldin, chairman of the International Montessori Foundation and one of the event’s key note speakers. “Many are based on the sense of education as a burden, as something terribly serious. Our argument is that children are capable of amazing things. They are all born incredibly different, and their gifts will look different. They don’t need to operate in a culture of fear,” he says.

The curriculum has been widely successful in North America and Europe; however, Montessori has recently seen a boom in popularity in Hong Kong and different parts of Asia. “The growth of IMS shows what a huge demand there is for Montessori,” says Anne Sawyer, school founder of IMS. “When we first started we had 68 children, we were a small community school. Now we have about 900 kids,” she notes.

Although Montessori is known mostly as an education framework for kindergarteners, IMS has helped the primary school curriculum gain traction in Hong Kong. “If you look back 13 years ago, people thought Montessori was just kindergarten,” says Karin Ann, another school founder of IMS. “We were the first school to bring primary here, and since then, the proliferation of primary curriculum all around the world has really grown.” IMS is now the first internationally accredited Montessori primary school in greater China, and the second in Asia.

Some notable attributes of Montessori education include the diverse age groups in classes, in which older children may serve as mentors to the younger ones. While the children are given specific assignments and tasks which they must complete, they are granted the freedom to choose “when, how and with whom” they do the work, meaning classmates can help each other depending on their specific strengths and weaknesses.

“Follow the child”, a core philosophy of Montessori, is based on the idea that each child has a unique style of learning, and should not be forced to learn in a rigid, pre-determined way, as is often the case with some local Hong Kong schools. Ann, who experienced a local Hong Kong education growing up, believes Montessori’s engaging teaching method is what appeals so strongly to parents. “The way we teach here at IMS, the children are often so engaged and challenged at just the right level, that it allows them to focus naturally without having to get told off,” she says.