Schools predate confederation

	Students at work Photo: Comstock

Education in Canada is, for the most part, a provincial responsibility. Each province and territory has its own system, an arrangement set out in the British North America Act of 1867 (renamed the Constitution Act, 1867 in 1982). The roots of Canada's education system, however, lie much deeper.

As far back as 1635, Jesuit priests had established a college for young men in Quebec. In 1766, the Government of Nova Scotia passed its first school act, requiring the screening of would-be teachers by two justices of the peace or an Anglican Church minister.

In Upper Canada, schools were often established by anyone who wanted to teach—the first recorded ones being set up in 1785 in Kingston and in 1789 in York, or Toronto as it is known today.

Legislation passed in 1846 and 1850 set the groundwork for a system of schools for the united Province of Canada. Egerton Ryerson, a Methodist minister and superintendent of the school system there, travelled to 20 different countries to learn about education. Ryerson returned to Canada with teaching methods from Prussia, textbooks from Ireland and administration techniques he observed in the United States.

Ryerson’s recommendations were integrated into a series of legislative measures governing schools in the province. Four years after Confederation, the Act to Improve the Common and Grammar Schools outlined an approach to public education that would later greatly influence school systems elsewhere in the country.