Cedar Creek State School was opened on 21 September 1874 on the present site of the school. There are few records of the initial days of the school but it was envisaged that all work was completed by a local committee. One fifth of the cost of building a school was found by local subscriptions. After the task went to tender, the school building was built but not to a satisfactory standard. The school inspector commented very unfavourably on the buildings in October 1874. In December 1874, The Education Office applied for a school reserve of two acres. This was felt to be too small so an area of five acres was granted that was later increased to ten acres but in 1913, two acres was surrendered for the School of Arts Hall. Today this is the Cedar Creek Hall and our school is situated on the side of a slope heading towards the Albert River right beside this historical hall.
First day enrolment was 38 students. Even though this climbed to 53 in 1881, the average class size for the day was only 25 students. Life was very hard for farming communities and very often when planting was completed or harvesting needed to be done, children often had to help in these tasks.
Small schools in farming communities grew indifferently sometimes with the numbers of students rising and declining. Numbers of students enrolled in the school fluctuated from 27 in 1920 to 47 in 1938 and then as low as 15 in 1974. Land sales brought about this decline but the school population started to take an upwards trend.
With the popularity of country living near a city, small acreage living increased throughout the district. Our school gradually grew to its current size of 305. Currently we have 13 classes from Prep year to Year 6. Many of our families are relatively new to the district but we also have a part of our community who are closely related to early settlers of our district.
Even though our school has fluctuated in size, the culture of our school has remained the same. Some events in our history reflect a time of conflict between community and school but there always have been willing workers to roll up their sleeves when hard work needed to be done around our school.
Today’s community feels much the same. They appreciate a small country school atmosphere with values very similar to the families who support our school. Once again when the call is out to roll up our sleeves and help out in our school community, there are always willing helpers. It proves that the school is an important part of the communities surrounding Cedar Creek, just as the families in the Cedar Creek district being essential to the well being of our school.