In March, 1826, Rev. Dr. Strachan submitted to the Lieutenant-Governor a very able and comprehensive report[22] showing why a university ought at once to be established. The report gives an interesting and authentic summary of the state of education in Upper Canada at that time. "The present state of Education in this Province consists of Common Schools throughout the Townships, established under several Acts of the Provincial Legislature, and which are now, by the exertions of Your Excellency, placed on an excellent footing, requiring no other improvements than the means of multiplying their number, which, no doubt, will be granted as the finances of the Province become more productive. In about three hundred and forty Common Schools established in the different Districts of the Colony, from seven to eight thousand children are taught reading and writing, the elements of arithmetic, and the first principles of religion; and when it is considered that the parents commonly send their children in rotation--the younger in summer when the roads are good, and the older in winter--it is not too much to say that nearly double this number, or from twelve to fourteen thousand children, profit annually by the Common Schools. The consequence is that the people, scattered as they are over a vast wilderness, are becoming alive to the great advantage of educating their children, and are, in many places, seconding, with laudable zeal, the exertions of the Legislature, and establishing schools at their own expense. [22] See copy in D. H. E., Vol. I., pp. 211-213. "Provision is made by law for the translation of some of the more promising scholars from the Common to the District Schools, where the classics and practical mathematics are taught. In these schools, eleven in number, there are at present upwards of 300 youth acquiring an education to qualify them for the different professions; and, although they can seldom support more than one master, several of the young gentlemen who have been brought up in them are now eminent in their professions, and would, by their talents and high principles, do credit to seminaries of greater name. But the period has arrived when the District Schools [Grammar Schools] will become still more useful by confining themselves to the intention of their first establishment, namely, nurseries for a University--an institution now called for by the increased population and circumstances of the Colony, and most earnestly desired by the more respectable inhabitants.