Teachers will not be replaced after they leave and some classes will be cut as Marlborough Boys' College tries to balance its books for next year, but a foundation was launched last night to help the school focus on improving academic standards.
The Marlborough College Charitable Foundation aims to raise money for the college and increase community links with the school.
College principal Wayne Hegarty talked last night about teachers being made redundant when the school closed for the year. He was not available this morning, but college board chairman Phil Robinson said it was more a case of teachers not being replaced when they left, while some support staff had their hours cut.
Senior French classes have also been cut, along with other classes which had become "uneconomic", in a bid to cut $175,000 from the school budget.
Mr Robinson could not give details of the other classes cut.
Students had chosen their subjects for next year and the board had cut classes that did not have enough numbers to make them cost effective, he said.
Some parents wanted the college to reverse its decision to not teach French next year. Funds from the new foundation could keep small specialist subject classes running, he said.
The launch of the foundation was the "start of another epoch" for the school and would help the board and the principal focus on improving academic results rather than raising money, he said.
The college is repaying a $1.3 million loan after it got into financial strife and was bailed out by the Government.
Foundation chairman Tony de Reeper said the foundation was important if the school was to compete with the top colleges. The best colleges in the country had fundraising groups that helped them get the best from their students, he said.
The foundation, a registered charitable trust, was set up by a group of former pupils and parents to support the college's academic, cultural and sporting needs.
Foundation trustee Robin Sutherland said the college's decision to start an international school in China had been "foolish and naive".
The Government bailed out the college in 2009 after it ran up a debt of more than $1.7 million through the failed Chinese venture, financial ineptitude and a culture of overspending.
The "China thing" continued to "hover over the school like a black cloud", Mr Sutherland said.
The foundation was not coming up with a rescue package to repay that debt, he said. The school had a new board and a new principal and they had to deal with that.
The foundation's job was to bring in people to help the school grow and to give them the funding to do it.
"We need to get on moving the school to where we want it to be," he said.
Mr Hegarty said last night the school had a lot to be proud of but had to improve academic results.
Only one student achieved a scholarship last year and none got an excellence endorsement in NCEA level one.
Academic results would not improve without money, he said.
Mr Sutherland said the foundation wanted to remove that financial burden from Mr Hegarty and "replace it with the even bigger burden of high expectations".
Mr Robinson said the board was making good progress in repaying the Government loan and had made two of the required $100,000 annual repayments.
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