The school was originally established in January 1962 as "North Ryde High School", and it was located on a large site in North Ryde, bounded by Waterloo Road, Wicks Road and Epping Road. A portion of the buildings in Stages I and II were completed by January 1962 which allowed the first students to attend. In 1965, when Malvina High School was established in the neighbouring suburb of Ryde, North Ryde High School was used to house 2nd Form classes until the construction of the school was complete. In 1985 the decision was taken to rename the school "Peter Board High School", after the first Director of Education in New South Wales who oversaw a significant implementation of the Public Schools Act 1880. The name change took effect from January 1986. The name change also saw the closure of the nearby Ryde High School, with its students transferred to Peter Board High. The school's catchment area stretched from Eastwood to North Sydney and its student population was known for a wide diversity of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In December 1987, the new School Library was officially opened by the Minister for Education and Member for Gladesville, Rodney Cavalier. As a result of falling enrolments in the late 1990s, the Department made the decision to close the school by December 1998, on the basis that enrolments would continue to fall, with the remaining students transferred to Malvina High School.
School site
Following the school's closure, in 2006 the NSW Department of Education and Training sold the site to Dexus Property Group for $51.75 million. Demolition of the school buildings subsequently commenced, which were completed by July 2008. From 2001 to 2008, the former school buildings were used as a filming location for "Summer Bay High School" in the Seven Network television drama, Home and Away. The school oval was retained by the Department for use as a Hockey field for the Ryde Hunters Hill District Hockey Club and ownership was later transferred in 2012 from the Department to the State Sporting Venues Authority. In 2013 Dexus sold the former school site to Masters Home Improvement, with the intention of being the site of a new hardware store. However, with the collapse of the Masters retail business the site was put up for sale again. In response, the mayor of Ryde, Jerome Laxale, called upon the government to buy back the land for a new school, to help alleviate the high demand for schools in the Ryde area: "This is a great opportunity for the State Government to purchase the land of the proposed Masters Store and meet the increasing need for schools in this area that it did not address in its 'Plan for Growing Sydney'". In November 2017, it was announced that the NSW Government had signed an exclusivity agreement to repurchase the former school site for a new high school, with the alumni and current Premier of NSW, Gladys Berejiklian noting: "For me, personally, it brings back a lot of memories having attended this high school very proudly and I remember at the time we ran protests to keep the school open... it’s the right thing to do for the community because we know how quickly the area has grown".
