Our Story

Our Story

Our award-winning $8 million campus is creating a new benchmark for education and sustainability on the Sunshine Coast, and is quickly becoming a flagship for Montessori around the globe. We say that with a sense of accomplishment because our beginnings were humble and the journey has been challenging – but ultimately incredibly rewarding.

In 1995 a group of parents and educators banded together to create the region’s first Montessori school at Sippy Downs. Originally there were just 13 children, one guide, and plenty of passion. It wasn’t too long before our success provided the opportunity to expand so more children could get the opportunity of a Montessori education on the Sunshine Coast – and a decision was made to relocate to Forest Glen.

In 2015 MIC welcomed 235 students – and for the first time the children could start and finish their education at MIC. Located on 22 hectares (54 acres) of the most biologically diverse landscape of any school setting within the Asia Pacific region, students are experiencing an environment that is custom-built to support the Montessori philosophy, with a college that is 10 times the size of the previous school at Sippy Downs.

We offer educational programs for children from three to 18 years of age with a global curriculum that encourages creativity and independence. Children are grouped in three year age cohorts and are encouraged to learn from, and teach one other. Uniquely designed materials allow children to be ‘hands-on’, learn at their own pace, building confidence, inner discipline and a sense of self-worth, forming the basis for joyful, lifelong learning.

The one constant over all these years has been the school’s focus on the children – after all, that’s what a Montessori education is all about.

A World Leader in Montessori Education

MIC is just one of four schools worldwide to be selected as a Centre for Adolescent Studies, joining The Hershey Farm School (Ohio, USA); Colegio Montessori de Chihuahua (Mexico); and Montessorikolan Lara fur livit (Sweden).

These four schools form an international conglomerate and are recognised by AMI and NAMTA as best practice in emerging adolescent programs (land laboratories).

Aside from the international prestige that attends this selection, the ongoing benefits to the College and its learning community include: access to the best and brightest practitioners at both adolescent and senior phase levels, our students receive the very best adolescent Montessori learning the world has to offer, and recognition as a research, study and international training facility.

“This orientation made Montessori history. We went from the importance of the farm as prepared environment for work, to land as an integral part of human culture, from part to whole in a broadening vision that only Australians could bring. We hope to take what we learned and broadcast the seeds to grow more schools like yours. Thank you for your gift of land, school, and people. The AMI-NAMTA Orientation enjoyed a great experience.”

David Kahn, Executive Director, North American Montessori Teachers’ Association