The Ministry of Education has been communicating with schools about the possibility of closing schools, but advice at this time is that children should continue to attend.
Principals are frustrated that some parents are refusing to send their children to school due to fear of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
The Ministry of Education's deputy secretary Katrina Casey told Morning Report there is "no rational reason at this time why children and young people should not be in education".
She said by far most parents were continuing to send their children to school.
"The scenarios that we're planning for are if we do need to close a school, if there is a case in a school, or in a community that the school is very close to, and in that situation we're doing a stock take to see what additional information we would need to put in place to help schools and parents out."
Casey said that included finding out what the barriers to online learning were, how many children did not have devices at home, how many families did not have access to wifi, whether there were data caps that would cause an issue and what kind of telecommunications support would be needed.
She said that would allow them to start to have discussions with various telecommunication companies about what might be needed.
The most likely scenario for a school closure would be if a case occurred within a school.
"And we [would then] need to shut the school initially for one to two days so the health authorities can trace and contact any close contacts and then evaluate the situation after that."
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