The School was founded on 1st July, 1908 as a
Government Department Training Institution attached to the
Colonial Survey Department in Lagos for the Training of
Technical Assistants. It later moved from Lagos to Ibadan in
1926 and later to Oyo in 1934.
When regionisation came and surveying was no longer in the
exclusive list, the School was split into two. One belonged to
Federal Surveys and the other maintained by the then Western
Region Survey Department. This arrangement continued till 1965
when the Federal School then located at Okene had a storm
disaster. The Federal Students were then relocated to the
Western Regional School still at Oyo.
With this co-habitation, the Federal Surveys Department
continued to support the School with Staff and materials
(instruments and funds inclusive) until 1976. In that year, the
Western Region, then known as Western State was split into three
states; Oyo, Ogun and Ondo States and the proprietorship of the
school was transferred to Federal Surveys again.
For about 80 years of its existence, the school was running
programmes only in Land Surveying. In January 1989, the Federal
Survey School of Photogrammetry and Cartography earlier based at
Ebute-Metta, Lagos was transferred to Oyo and merged with the
School. In effect, from 1989, the school started to run Basic
(Later Intermediate) and Advanced Certificate Programmes in
Photogrammetry and Cartography.
The School had also changed its name at various times. It had
been known as "Survey School", "School of Surveying", "Federal
Survey School" and finally by virtue of
Decree 19 of 1990 it was established as
"Federal School of Surveying".