National leader Christopher Luxon says he isn't ruling out punishing parents if their kids aren't in class.
But the Prime Minister has hit back saying that would see parents criminalised for children leaving school for funerals and weddings.
It's not just COVID-19 keeping kids from class. It's also often poverty and housing insecurity.
Brendon Crompton tracks down students missing school and says there's something else going on too.
"If you're in a school in Pukekohe and you're suddenly in emergency housing in Māngere, the cost of uniforms and other stuff starts to play into that," he said.
"We also have some families who don't value education. There's probably 15, 20 percent who just flatly refuse to send their kids to school. So because we don't have a bottom line, there's no prosecutions, no one's holding them to account, we just have to park those cases."
But National is keen on holding parents to account.
"All options are on the table as we think about what can Government do, what can schools and importantly what can parents do," said Luxon.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said a large proportion of parents "do believe an absence from school is justified for things like funerals, weddings and holidays".
"What the Leader of the Opposition seems to be suggesting is that parents should be criminalised for that."
Digging into truancy data from term 2, almost 84 percent of term time was spent at school, 10 percent of absences were justified and almost every reason given was illness. Almost six percent was unjustified and most had no real excuse.
The Ministry of Education and schools have been able to prosecute parents for truant children for at least 30 years.
Figures show there have been just eight prosecutions since 2016. The ministry told Newshub it's wary of prosecutions because of its effectiveness in resolving what are often complex problems driving poor attendance.
"The use of fines, which has been available for decades, has not been frequent because it doesn't work," said Ardern.
"As long as there is evidence that they work to get kids into school, we will look at anything and everything," said Luxon.
National is promising to release its full policy on truancy early next year.
