The outstanding feature of the Act was the strengthening of Trustee Boards by recognizing them as corporate bodies with full power to manage schools under Government regulations and full power to levy taxes or rates upon the District which they represented. In case the Municipal Council collected school money, they did it only as a matter of convenience. Provision was made for securing school sites, erecting and furnishing new buildings, electing trustees, holding board meetings, keeping schools accounts, appointing collectors for school moneys, providing books and apparatus, educating indigent children and forming school libraries. Teachers' duties and responsibilities were not materially altered. They were, however, effectually secured against loss of the full amount of salary promised them by trustee boards. Adequate provision was made for school sections composed of adjoining parts of two or more townships. Provision was made for Township Boards of Trustees on the request of a majority of the school supporters, to manage all the schools of a township. County Boards of Public Instruction were formed, consisting of the County Superintendent and the Trustees of the District Grammar School. These boards were to meet four times a year, to hold examinations and license teachers. They were to use their influence to establish school libraries and promote the cause of education. District superintendents were limited to one hundred schools each, and were to receive one pound per annum for each school, besides necessary travelling expenses. The Superintendent was no longer the custodian of school money, but gave orders to the Township Treasurer to pay to teachers their proper allowances. The Superintendent was to visit every school in his District once each quarter, and to deliver a public lecture in every school section once each year. Thus the way was open for the District Superintendent to become an expert, giving a minimum of time to clerical work and a maximum to the encouragement of pupils and teachers. He was to become a link between the Department of Education on the one hand and the District Council and Trustee Boards on the other. He was a local officer, but his duties were definitely prescribed by a central authority. Through him the Chief Superintendent and the Council of Public Instruction were able to keep in touch with pupils, teachers, school visitors, trustee boards, county boards, and district councils. School visitors were given the same privileges as by the Act of 1846, except the right to grant licenses to teachers. The General Board of Education was merged into the Council of Public Instruction, with duties substantially the same as those assigned the former body in 1846.
Incorporated towns and cities were no longer to have school sections, but instead a Board of Trustees to manage school affairs. Town and City School Boards were allowed three ways of securing the money necessary, in addition to the school fund, for common school purposes. The Board might ask the Municipal Council to levy an assessment for the required sum, in which case the said Council were bound to comply with its wishes; the Board might levy a rate bill upon the parents of pupils attending school; or they might raise the required funds partly by a rate bill and partly by an assessment levied by the Municipal Council.
The only real difference between the methods of raising money in towns and cities on the one hand and rural sections on the other, lay in the plan of deciding how the money was to be raised. In rural sections the ratepayers assembled at the annual meeting, made the decision, and the trustees carried out their wishes; in towns and cities the trustees had full power to decide upon the method of taxation without consulting the ratepayers. School trustees in incorporated villages were governed by the same rules as trustees of towns and cities, except in the manner of the annual election.
One very important feature of the new Act was the setting apart of £3,000 a year for the establishment and support of school libraries, and £25 a year for each District Teachers' Institute. A sum was also set apart for procuring plans and publications for the improvement of school architecture. The Chief Superintendent was authorized to issue provincial certificates to Normal School graduates.
The Act of 1850 also made some important changes relating to Separate Schools, which will be noted in another chapter.
Dr. Ryerson always felt that he owed much to the Governor-General, Lord Elgin, for helping him to form a public opinion which made possible the legislation of 1850. That distinguished nobleman was a graduate of Oxford, and he never lost an opportunity of helping forward any movement designed to raise the intellectual status of the people. But it was largely Ryerson's unaided efforts that gave Upper Canada in 1850 such a splendid educational machinery. It was no factory-made plan, but a system developed step by step out of partial failures into something better. It was, like all English law, the result of applying a common-sense remedy to a clearly proved weakness.
During the passage through the Legislature of the Bill of 1850, a debate arose about Ryerson's salary, and the value of his services to the country. The following condensed account of a speech delivered in Parliament in July, by Hon. Francis Hincks, makes clear the attitude finally adopted by the Liberal Government toward Ryerson, and for that reason has some historical interest:
"The member for Toronto, Mr. Boulton, had charged the Administration with buying the support of the Superintendent of Education with an increased salary. He had desired, in bringing forward this question, to make it as little a political question as possible. He thought that the great question of education might be treated without reference to party differences. He thought it his duty, considering the position which the Reverend Superintendent of Education occupied towards the party with whom he acted, to state his whole course of conduct towards that gentleman since he had taken office. It was well known to the House that the reverend gentleman was engaged, before accepting the office which he now held, in very keen controversy with the members of the present ministry; he had taken a course decidedly hostile to them. As writer for the public press at that time, he had himself engaged in that contest, though without personal feeling, as he trusted he had engaged in every contest of the kind. But there was undoubtedly on his own part, and on that of his colleagues, a strong political feeling of dislike to the reverend gentleman, on account of the formidable opposition with which they were met by him. He was appointed to the office of Superintendent by the late Government, and he did not blame that Government for so appointing him; for, if anyone ever established strong claims upon a party, it was the reverend gentleman by his defence of that administration. The present ministry again assumed the duties of the Government, and undoubtedly there was a general feeling among their supporters that one of the first measures expected of them was to get rid of the reverend gentleman in some way or other, and in that feeling most certainly he sympathized. He had found, however, bye-the-bye, that those who were most eager to recommend the Government to dismiss officials, when they were put into similar situations, into the municipal councils for instance, that they did not carry out those views, that they did not turn out their opponents without a reason for it. There were two or three ways of removing the Chief Superintendent; one was to make the office a political one; but after the best consideration being given to the question, it was not considered advisable to do that, and the proposition to abolish the office altogether, he was satisfied would have had the worst possible consequences on the educational interests of the country, after observing the benefits of active superintendents in New York, and our own Province. The only other mode then, if these two were resisted, was to remove the incumbent altogether, and then the question came, whether he had acted in such a manner as to justify his dismissal. He had often asked this question of the persons who urged his dismissal, and they had never given one good reason to support the affirmative. He was not one of those who thought that because a person supported one Government that he was therefore incapable of serving faithfully those who succeeded them, whom he had formerly opposed, always supposing, of course, that his office was not a political one. He could not find that the reverend gentleman had entered in the slightest degree into the field of politics, and as he had discharged his duties with great zeal and ability, they had no reason to interfere with him. Then the point was, how they were to act towards him in his position, and his (Mr. H.'s) determination was to give him the most cordial support; as a member of the Government he considered it his duty to do so. He felt it his duty to give the same support to officers who came oftener into contact with him, the officials of the Custom House, and he defied anyone to say that any political opponent of his had received less cordial support in the discharge of the duties of his office than his friends had; the efficiency of the service absolutely required that he should do so. He put himself in communication with the reverend gentleman in reference to this Bill, and as he (Mr. H.) believed that Doctor Ryerson possessed a more complete knowledge of the school system than any other person, he thought that any Government would have done very wrong not to have availed themselves of that knowledge. He deeply regretted the course which some gentlemen with whom he generally acted had taken on this matter.
"He would only say now, that he considered he should be paid the highest salary given to any officer, for the duties of none were more onerous or more important. He might remark that he had not found lawyers in the House very anxious to reduce the salaries of the judges, but when it came to civilians, to superintendents of schools, then five hundred pounds a year was far too much. Now he considered the duties of that office as quite equal in importance, and requiring equal talents to those of a Collector of Customs, and thought that he should not be placed in an inferior position to them."[81]
The Toronto Globe, of July 16th, 1850, speaking on the debate in the Assembly, said:
"The debate on Egerton Ryerson's salary was, we think, just another instance of pandering to the cry of the moment. His salary was sought to be made the same as the Lower Canada Superintendent's. Well, the Lower Canada Superintendent's salary is five hundred pounds, but it would not do to name that sum for Upper Canada until the retrenchment committee had operated upon Lower Canada. Now, why not say at once that five hundred pounds is the proper salary for the Superintendent of Education of nearly a million people, and stick to it? We are no admirers of Egerton Ryerson, and we have always thought, and we think still, that the present ministry should have turned him out neck and crop the moment they got into power; but we are free to admit that he is a man of very great talent, who, at any mercantile or professional business he might engage in, would readily make five hundred pounds a year, and we do think that this sum is as little as could be assigned to an office of such high public importance."