The following is an extract from Look To The Light: The Life Of Lilydale Higher Elementary/High School, written by Lynda Carroll and published by Lilydale High School.

Even in the middle of war, the future had to be considered, and it was both poignant and exciting that schools - both state and high - at Lilydale were so important to the community. Plans for the establishment of the high school could now come to slow fruition, with realisation that, as the population grew, this next level of education was essential to students in the district and would be an important part of planning for the future...

Even before the school’s opening in 1919, the advantages of the Higher Elementary School system were canvassed. It was pointed out that completing four years of secondary education gave access to Federal and State public examinations, after which students could ultimately gain access to university courses...

By the time the school opened, an average attendance of 51 pupils’ made the Clarke Street premises - the school’s first location, just four minutes away from its current Melba Avenue site - their home. This was the pioneering cohort, establishing a tradition of family links and ongoing connections, with innumerable clans returning to the school generation after generation, even as teachers and staff when studying days were over.

With the shift from Higher Elementary School to fully fledged High School in 1951, which would ‘allow students at the school to study up to matriculation standard...’

Higher elementary schools teach only up to intermediate standard’, yet another layer, complete with an expanded curriculum, was added to the story of Lilydale High School and its Higher Elementary School predecessor. This meant that students could complete their secondary education in one school, instead of effectively being curtailed at the equivalent of today’s Year 10.

The setting in which the school finds itself today is still vital to its existence and ongoing well-being. Lilydale in the 21st century has evolved to become a huge link to and in the outer east of Melbourne. However, it still holds echoes of those determined personalities of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the students and teachers of Lilydale High School share, learn and make their way out into the wider world, they do so with the endeavours of the past silently accompanying them.

Today, with over 1500 students attending, with over 100 years of stories and lives behind them, Lilydale High School has a personality, an identity and a life of its own. From the playground to the huge reptile house; from the basketball stadium to the mural.