Phyllis Wallbank

Phyllis Wallbank MBE (born 1 September 1918) is a British educationalist who, in 1948, founded the first all-age Montessori school in Great Britain and the Gatehouse Learning Centre, which took its name from the gatehouse of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great in London.

Wallbank began as a Froebel-trained teacher. Working in juvenile courts as a children's officer in Buckinghamshire, however, she realised that far fewer children would become delinquent if they could be educated to assume their own personal responsibilities and so take their rightful place in society. To do this, she trained under Maria Montessori and became a personal friend. In Montessori's later years, she served as her co-examiner for both the ordinary and the advanced courses. She served as Chairperson of the Montessori Association in England and as Vice-President of the International Montessori Association. She also organised the last International Montessori Congress, which met in London shortly before Montessori's death. William J. Codd, Professor of Education at Seattle University, wrote of Wallbank: "The one on whom the robe of Montessori should fall to carry on the living tradition."

Wallbank was married to the Revd Prebendary Newell Eddius Wallbank, a long-time Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, and a noted musician and scholar of the pipe organ. It was in the priory church's gatehouse that Wallbank began the Gatehouse School, becoming the Gatehouse Learning Centre, later expanding to Great Missenden.

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