Until the 1840s, there was no supervision of instruction in schools beyond that provided by school principals and teachers. When Ryerson took his position as Chief Superintendent, he quickly recognized the need to establish local or district superintendents in each county to ensure departmental regulations set by the Board of Education were being met.

After 1871 local superintendents were renamed school inspectors. School inspectors would make site visits to each school in their inspectorate and report on the administration of the schools, the condition of the school building, equipment and grounds, and would evaluate the teacher's classroom management and teaching abilities.

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Portrait of Alexander Dingwall Fordyre, the
Fergus School Inspector, [ca. 1880]
Connon family fonds
Glass plate negative
Reference Code: C 286-1-0-11-11
Archives of Ontario, I0011627

The photograph below of Gananoque High School shows the same school that Mr. J. E. Hodgson reports on in the accompanying High School Inspector's Report.

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High School Inspector's Annual Report, 1901 for Gananoque High School
High school inspectors' annual reports
Reference Code: RG 2-105, volume 37 (A-M)
Archives of Ontario

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High School, Gananoque: group of students and teachers in front of school, [ca. 1900]
Marsden Kemp fonds
Black and white print
Reference Code: C 130-1-0-9-12
Archives of Ontario, I0012958

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The school inspector's findings would be submitted in a final report to the Chief Superintendent (the Minister of Education) and would be used to determine whether or not a school would be granted funding.If a school did not comply with departmental regulations, that school would be denied funding until it could make the necessary improvements.

The letter below was written by the Principal of Gananoque High School in response to the Inspector's Report. In this letter Principal Graham ensures the Deputy Minister that the issue with the school's care-taker, as addressed by Inspector Hodgson on the first page of the report, has been resolved.

Letter from R. G. Graham, Principal, to Deputy Minister, re: sanitary condition of school, 1901
Department of Education select subject files
Reference Code: RG 2-42-0-4266, microfilm reel MS 5654
Archives of Ontario

While this letter and the Inspector's Report are found in different records series (RG 2-105 and RG 2-42) at the Archives of Ontario, they are directly related to one another. This is an example of how, with research, archival material can present the full story, from many different perspectives.

Canadian National Railway school car and class at Nandair,
Inspector Gillies on left, teacher F. Sloman on right
Black and white print
Reference Code: RG 2-43 Acc. 4437 #1
Archives of Ontario, I0020880

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