Kids could run the risk of suffering in more ways than just disrupted learning if schools are forced to close, education staff say.
Blair Dravitski, principal at Linwood Avenue School in Christchurch, says teachers are worried what impact closing down classrooms could have on students when it comes to providing pastoral care like food programmes.
From the beginning of this year, a free lunch programme was rolled out at 30 low decile schools around the country and is set to feed up to 21,000 kids from Year 1 to 8 by 2021.
Mr Dravinski says they are greatly concerned over what this would mean for their school cohort.
"We feed some of our kids, we provide warmth to some of our kids so other aspects are of some concern as well. It does concern us greatly around the support our students would be getting for an extended period of time."
He says there is also the added issue of how to teach children in younger education levels as parents may have to take time off of work in order to care for their kids.
An added challenge for primary schools is without supervision in a classroom environment, if the schools were forced to turn to home learning, their pupils would need a parent with them.
"For us there is the added challenge that children can't be at home by themselves...there's no centralised learning model for primary either, so we would have to look at parents possibly having to give up work and therefore their income."
Other schools around the country have also begun looking in to how they can continue with teaching their students if they are made to turn to isolation.
Auckland Boys Grammar had begun trialling home learning, by sending an entire year group home for the day and teaching them remotely.
Principal Tim O'Connor says they are wanting to investigate the process early, in order to prepare the network if they are made to operate from home.
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