National Party education spokeswoman Erica Stanford says new classrooms will sit empty if kids aren't attending school and learning the basics.
It comes as the Government made a pre-Budget announcement today that it will put $300 million into building 300 new classrooms, as well as a further $100m to build up to four new schools and school expansions.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins made the announcement at a Wellington primary school today, alongside Education Minister Jan Tinetti.
But Stanford said unless the Government creates a plan to "turn around dire levels of school attendance", any new classrooms it builds would be "half-empty".
“Rome burns while Labour fiddles around the edges pretending that all is fine with a business-as-usual announcement that doesn’t address the sector’s most significant challenges," she said.
“Without a proper plan for the future, Labour is robbing hundreds of thousands of Kiwi kids of the world-class education they deserve.
“Rather than excuses and empty classrooms, a National government would restore confidence in the education system by teaching the basics brilliantly so every student has the same opportunity to live the life they want.”
New classrooms were "always necessary" with a growing population, she said, but the "biggest concern" was attendance.
“According to a February Cabinet paper, the Government is languishing behind its attendance rate targets. This means that the education outcomes of hundreds of thousands of students are at risk according to the Ministry of Education.
“Three months after Jan Tinetti announced her so-called ‘Attendance Turnaround Package’, just one of the 82 attendance officers that were supposed to start work in Term 2 have made it to the frontline to assist schools.
“That is a disastrous display of delivery, but instead of fronting up to the public the under-fire Education Minister just blamed her officials for her own failings.
“It’s all very well announcing new classrooms, but there are more pressing and fundamental issues with the direction that Labour is taking education in New Zealand."
Stanford said kids were not going to school, achievement levels are "plummeting", and more and more schools are choosing to ditch NCEA Level 1 altogether because they had "no confidence" in the Government’s NCEA change package.
The Government says the $300m package will help ease pressure in the system and "fix years of underfunding, overcrowding and decay".
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