The former school in the centre of the village of Cerniat, with its white rendered upper section on exposed stone foundations, originally housed two classrooms and two teachers' lodgings. With its double gable roof, it reflects the rural codes of Heimatstyl, giving the building the reassuring appearance of a large chalet with prominent eaves.

The first school in Cerniat dates back to around 1790. At the end of the 19th century, as the number of schoolchildren increased (141 in 1888 for 730 inhabitants), the municipality decided to build a new school. In 1902, the project was entrusted to the architect Alphonse Andrey, a native of the village. It was inaugurated in 1906. Renovated in the summer of 1996, it still occupies its rightful place of honour in the centre of the village. After the Cercle Scolaire de la Vallée de la Jogne was founded in Charmey in 2018, the building was used as an artists' residence, for example by the regionalist painter Augustin Pasquier in 2018.

A second school existed in the commune, at La Valsainte. It catered for pupils living upstream in the valley, the five kilometres separating Les Echelettes from the hamlet of Les Riaux. The evacuation of this hamlet in 1967 due to the instability of the terrain, and the possibility of taking pupils from further away to the school in Cerniat, led to the closure of this school in 1971, which consisted of a single class with six grades, the last in the canton. Since 1975, until the Jogne Valley classes were merged, pupils from Cerniat, Crésuz and Châtel-sur-Montsalvens have been split between the schools in Châtel-sur-Montsalvens and the village of Cerniat.

In collaboration with the municipality of Val-de-Charmey