It appears all but one school in Otago offering Adult and Community Education (ACE) courses will abandon their programmes when government funding is cut next year.
Many of the 15 schools in the Otago region offering ACE programmes had been investigating ways of continuing their courses.
However, Logan Park High School was the only institution to provide "an expression of interest" in continuing ACE courses to the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) before the deadline last week.
At present, the Government provides $16 million annually for ACE programmes in New Zealand, but that figure will be cut by 80% next year, leaving schools to fight over $3.2 million, which will be targeted at literacy, numeracy, te reo Maori and sign-language courses for adults.
The cut means most schools will not have enough funding to continue their ACE programmes.
Logan Park High School principal Jane Johnson is hoping to receive funding from the TEC to continue sign language, English for immigrants and numeracy classes for adults.
Ms Johnson said she wanted to continue all the ACE courses, including the popular model-boat-making classes, but it would be too difficult to find funding.
"We can't charge double for adults to come to our courses. We don't think the adults who are doing our courses could afford [it]".
A meeting will be held at Logan Park High School at 5pm on Friday to gauge the community support for continuing ACE courses at the school.
Ms Johnson encouraged Dunedin residents to attend, saying poor support would make it difficult to gauge how viable it was to run courses.
