In the late 1880s the Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis argued that schools could no longer be seen just as places of education but had to serve the cause of constructing a common national identity. In 1889 he asked Parliament for authorization to secure a loan with the aim of constructing school buildings across Greece. This proposal was rejected but in 1894 the engineer Dimitrios Kallias was inspired by the ideas of Jules Ferry, the French Minister of Public Education, and wrote a report containing basic design regulations and guidelines for a modern typology of school buildings. The government also established a fund to finance the construction of schools.