The current institution finds its roots in the creation of the Ecole normale de l'an III by the post-revolutionary National Convention led by Robespierre in 1794. The school was created based on a recommendation by Joseph Lakanal and Dominique-Joseph Garat, who were part of the commission on public education. The Ecole normale was intended as the core of a planned centralised national education system. The project was also conceived as a way to reestablish trust between the Republic and the country's elites, which had been alienated to some degree by the Reign of Terror. The decree establishing the school, issued on 30 October 1794 (9 brumaire an III), states in its first article that "There will be established in Paris an Ecole normale (literally, a normal school), where, from all the parts of the Republic, citizens already educated in the useful sciences shall be called upon to learn, from the best professors in all the disciplines, the art of teaching."