Plans to establish a school for the local hapū were in motion from as early as 1851, when large blocks of Māori land in the region were acquired by the Crown.

He met with Te Whatuiapiti representatives at Roto-a-Tara pā on 17 April 1853, accompanied by the Governor Sir George Grey, who provided the Crown's backing for the plan.

In recent decades, the original acquisition of the Crown's portion of land gifted for the school has been the subject of a Waitangi Tribunal claim, which is presently in the settlement process.

I saw that the time would come when the Maoris would wish to have their own doctors, their own lawyers, and their own clergymen, and I felt it was only just to the race to provide facilities for their doing so.By 1900 Te Aute was renowned for high academic standards and had become pre-eminent among Māori boarding colleges, as it was sending several boys onto university each year.

His view was that the most academically able students could be sent to ordinary secondary schools, and he predicted that eventually Te Aute would have no role to play in preparing boys for university.

[11] Ultimately the commission recommended that greater emphasis be placed on manual and technical instruction in agriculture, and the college's trustees complied under pressure from the Department of Education.

[11] In the following years the college's attempted pivot toward vocational instruction began alienating academically gifted students, notably Golan Maaka.

The third and final brick facility was the largest – it contained the college library, its assembly hall and its administration offices – and was named after Governor General Sir Charles Fergusson, who laid its foundation stone in 1926 and officially opened it in 1927.

In 1973, the college was again hit by financial difficulties, but a direct appeal for assistance to the Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, secured Te Aute's future.

In October 1877, Sir Douglas Maclean set up the Te Makarini Trust with an initial endowment of £3,000, which still provides annual scholarships to gifted students.

In 1908, a legacy of £1,000 from the late Sir Walter Buller was gifted to the Te Aute Trustees for investment, the proceeds of which provided for a scholarship for many of the college's students over the following decades.