Forest school or Montessori?

The difference between Forest school and Montessori is mostly one axis: when formal academics start. Forest school sits firmly toward when the child is ready, and late is fine; Montessori sits between the two. They agree, more than most people expect, on measuring it, where the curriculum comes from and who else is there. Neither is the correct one. What follows is what each asks of a parent, and where the difference actually shows up on a Tuesday.

Forest school

Long sessions outdoors across the whole year, led by the children, with real tools, real fire and real risk assessed rather than removed. It is a pedagogy rather than a school type — most children get it alongside something else — and where it runs as a whole setting, formal academics start late and the body does most of the learning.

What it asks of you

Kit, laundry, and genuine indifference to weather
Accepting a higher rate of scrapes as part of the design
Checking it is the actual model rather than an outdoor afternoon with the name attached

Montessori

Children choose their own work from carefully designed materials, in mixed-age classes, across a long uninterrupted morning. The structure is in the environment rather than in the timetable: what is available is tightly controlled, and what a child does with it is not. Adults observe far more than they instruct.

What it asks of you

Accepting a school where nobody will tell you what your child did at 10am
Trusting a long ramp — the method front-loads independence and back-loads visible output
Checking the school rather than the name, which anyone may use
Usually fees, since state Montessori is rare outside a few systems

Side by side

Where they differ

Forest school is the filled marker, Montessori the hollow one. Widest difference first.

L2When formal academics start

when the child is ready, and late is fineearly, and ambitiously

Forest school sits firmly toward when the child is ready, and late is fine; Montessori sits between the two.

E2Outdoors and the body

learning happens at a tableoutdoors and hands-on is the point

Forest school sits firmly toward outdoors and hands-on is the point; Montessori sits a little toward outdoors and hands-on is the point.

E1Mixed ages

classes of the same agemixed-age groups

Forest school sits toward mixed-age groups; Montessori sits firmly toward mixed-age groups.

V3What it is for

childhood is the pointit should set up university and a career

Forest school sits firmly toward childhood is the point; Montessori sits a little toward childhood is the point.

C2Money and distancewhat your life allows

free and local, or it is not an optionwe can pay, and we can travel

Forest school sits a little toward we can pay, and we can travel; Montessori sits toward we can pay, and we can travel.

Where they agree

Usually more than the argument between them suggests.

Measuring it. Both sit firmly toward no grades, no tests.
Where the curriculum comes from. Both sit toward it emerges from the children.
Who else is there. Both sit between the two.
A view of the world. Both sit between the two.
What a teacher is. Both sit toward a guide who steps back.

Neither of these is the correct one

Which fits depends on what you value and on what your week actually allows — and the second of those is the half nobody writes about. The questionnaire scores both.

See which one you are already doing