THE first schools in Gympie were private schools, established long before any of the state schools were built.

One of the first of these was a Catholic convent school in Monkland, run by Mother Mary McKillop, in 1872 called St Joseph's.

Lay teachers from The Sister's of Mercy convent, where St Patrick's Primary School is now on Calton Hill, would travel to Monkland every day by horse and buggy to instruct the children of poor mining families.

They opened a second school at the convent in 1879 teaching a rapidly growing number of boys and girls in not only the three Rs but also in religious instruction.

In February 1904 the Christian Brothers opened a school in a former wooden church building and took over the education of the boys.

By 1938 St Josephs at Monkland was closed down and within a decade, Christian Brothers and St Patrick's Girls school would be united to become St Patrick's Primary for students up to Year 7 and St Patrick's College for Years 8 - 12. While followers of the Catholic faith were among the first to establish private schools in the area, they were by no means the last, when over a century later, Christian Family Church opened Victory college in 1980.

Since that time, the school has grown in size and facilities, with a dedicated Equestrian Centre opening in 2015 and a new hospitality wing added to the growing list of amenities.

Not long after Victory College started up, Cooloola Christian College also got off the ground in 1992 - the brainchild of four different churches, united in their desire to start a school that embraced their Christian ethos.

Long before technical colleges and TAFEs, Gympie had its School of the Arts.

Established in Gympie in 1870, by Edward Bytheway (former mayor, shopkeeper and early settler to the area), the School of the Arts building is now the home to the Gympie Art Gallery.

The intention of most Schools of Arts was to address the educational needs of the working classes, although it appears they were directed more towards the middle classes, with lectures on subjects such as philosophy, and classes in French and Latin, which may not have appealed to a largely illiterate working class.

In the early days, before the purpose-built building was opened in 1905 in Nash St, there was a lot of discussion over where to place the school and whether or not to join with the One Mile Miners Institute, another tertiary place of learning.

As with all Schools of Arts the 1920s saw the beginning of the demise of the institute.

New forms of entertainment such as the radio, increases in car ownership resulting in a more mobile community, world wars and the economic collapse of the 1930s all contributed to reductions in membership.

In order to raise revenue, the upstairs reading room was converted into a flat for rent in 1941. The role of the School of Arts was further diminished in the 1970s, when technical education was taken over by TAFE and the Gympie Adult Education Organisation.

TAFE had a fairly tight grip on the Gympie region from the 1970s with a sprawling facility purpose built at Cartwright Rd providing hundreds of students with alternative pathways to their preferred careers.

The Gympie campus was slowly down-graded and the University of the Sunshine Coast took over the former library and administration block and conducted some major renovations.

Eventually, in 2013 Wide Bay Institute of TAFE, of which Gympie was a member, was amalgamated with Sunshine Coast Institute of TAFE to become TAFE Queensland East Coast.

More than 200 students regularly attend the facility, learning everything from the Arts, to Nursing, to Science and Engineering.