The research behind Montessori education

You'll hear big claims about most approaches to early education. Montessori has more university-led, peer-reviewed trials behind it than most.

Reading at the 71st percentile

In 2025 Professor Angeline Lillard's team at the University of Virginia published the largest randomised trial of Montessori education yet, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team followed 588 children at 24 public Montessori schools in the United States.

By the end of kindergarten, children who had attended Montessori preschool read at the 71st percentile, against the 50th for children in other programmes. That means the average Montessori child read better than seven in ten of their peers.

The same children scored at the 60th percentile for executive function and the 59th for understanding what other people think. They kept building on that lead, where children from many other preschool programmes lose theirs.

More than twice as likely to reason about fairness

In 2006 Lillard and Else-Quest published a study in Science of 112 children in Milwaukee. The school used a lottery to give out Montessori places, which handed the researchers a natural randomised experiment.

At five, the Montessori children scored higher in reading, maths and executive function. The researchers asked the children how to settle a conflict: 43% of the Montessori group talked about justice or fairness, against 18% of the others. Observers also saw more friendly, cooperative play in the Montessori playground.

A smaller gap between richer and poorer children

In a 2017 study in Frontiers in Psychology, Lillard's team followed 141 children from age three to six, again using a lottery for places. In conventional settings, children from lower-income homes scored a full standard deviation behind their better-off peers. In Montessori settings they trailed by a third as much.

By the end of the study, lower-income Montessori children performed at the level of higher-income children in either type of school.

Benefits that last

Parents worry that early gains fade once children start school. Dohrmann and colleagues followed Milwaukee students who attended Montessori from preschool to fifth grade, and published their results in 2007. In high school, those students scored about a third of a standard deviation higher in maths and science.

In a French trial, Montessori children outperformed their peers at maths problem-solving five years after they left Montessori. They hadn't shown that advantage in kindergarten.

In 2021 Lillard surveyed 1,905 adults. Those with two or more years of Montessori scored higher on wellbeing, engagement, social trust and self-confidence, with the strongest effect for those who attended between three and six: the nursery years.

Creativity and motivation

In a 2019 Swiss study of 201 children, Denervaud's team found Montessori pupils ahead on schoolwork and on creativity, and the creative skills explained much of their academic lead. Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who described "flow", had earlier found Montessori students more motivated and more absorbed in their schoolwork.

What it means for your child

Independent researchers ran these studies, many as randomised trials in leading journals. Over twenty years they have found stronger learning and better social development in Montessori children, with benefits that outlast nursery.

At Buckingham Montessori we pair the method with the EYFS, so your child gets those benefits and meets the national milestones.

Studies referenced

• Lillard, A. S. et al. (2025). A national randomised controlled trial of the impact of public Montessori preschool at the end of kindergarten. PNAS.
• Lillard, A. S. & Else-Quest, N. (2006). Evaluating Montessori education. Science, 313(5795), 1893–1894.
• Lillard, A. S. et al. (2017). Montessori preschool elevates and equalizes child outcomes. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1783.
• Lillard, A. S. et al. (2021). An association between Montessori education in childhood and adult wellbeing. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
• Dohrmann, K. R. et al. (2007). High school outcomes for students in a public Montessori program. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2).
• Denervaud, S. et al. (2019). Beyond executive functions, creativity skills benefit academic outcomes. PLoS ONE, 14(1).
• Rathunde, K. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005). Middle school students' motivation and quality of experience. American Journal of Education, 111(3).
• Croset, M. C. et al. (2025). Early Montessori education shows delayed benefits for mathematical problem-solving. Scientific Reports.