The establishment of schools in the city area reflected population growth and settlement. At Smithfield, with its relatively large population (500 by 1866), a National School was established by 1850. At Old Guildford a small provisional school of bark and slabs was opened in 1869 with twenty-seven pupils and became a public school in 1877.

After the arrival of industries and railway stations, schools appeared at Granville in 1881, at Boothtown in 1882, at Hilltop (known as Wentworthville South) in 1884, and Gough Town School (Merrylands) opened in 1886. Toongabbie's first school was the wooden Primitive Methodist Chapel in 1886. Greystanes Public School was opened in 1902 and Westmead Public School in 1917.

In the period following the war, education changed as radically as any other aspect of everyday life. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the isolated schools drew in relatively small numbers of children from a one to two mile radius, taught by a single teacher and often in poor conditions.

In 1959, Holroyd City acquired its own state high school. Merrylands High School was built on a bush paddock purchased from the nuns at Cerdon. The Catholic Girls school was opened in 1960 and St Simon Stock Boys School (now St Paul's) had been opened in 1957.

The broadening of access to tertiary education after the Second World War had a great levelling effect on society.
Source: Karskens, Grace Holroyd: a Social History of Western Sydney Kensington, NSW: NSW University Press, 1991