The “St. Nicholas Montessori College” was formed during Dr. Montessori’s life in Great Britain as a Charitable Trust by its principals, Margaret Humphries and Phoebe Child. Trained and approved by Dr. Montessori herself, both of these educators were specifically authorized to provide Montessori teacher education through “distance learning” for practitioners too remote to attend the formal AMI courses which only Dr. Montessori herself was allowed to conduct at the time.
Following Dr. Montessori’s death in 1952, the St. Nicholas training continued as before, except now, however, against the will and approval of Dr. Montessori’s son, Mario who attempted to consolidate all training into his Association Montessori Internationale (AMI). Â
The St. Nicholas training approach provided correspondence instruction featuring a series of written lessons evaluated by qualified tutors in UK. It also included short local workshop training seminars conducted by Humphries and Child in various locations around the world.  In the 1980’s, Margaret Humphries left St. Nicholas to form her own separate “Montessori World Educational Institute” (MWEI) in California, USA. This new organization then continued correspondence courses and teacher education, following the same essential format as before in the St. Nicholas Montessori College.
Now, in the absence of Margaret Humphries and Phoebe Childs, the St. Nicholas Montessori College was broken up under the control of Leslie Briton, to become two separate organizations, “Montessori Centre Internationale” (MCI) and “London Montessori Center.” Both of these organizations still exist, providing training and certification to teachers through affiliated training centers in various countries around the world. The philosophical orientation of these organizations largely follow the “culture” type of Montessori teaching, since they conform closely to either British society or to that of their own particular country where the affiliated training takes place.