Truancy has increased by 20 percent in the last four years, with around 31,000 truants absent a week, according to government figures.
Truancy officer Metirana Morehu, from Manukau Truancy Services in Otara said "condoned absences" where parents were letting children stay home were a concern.
"Parents or caregivers who are allowing them to stay at home for reasons that were slightly dubious, like the children didn't feel like going to school."
She said a good deal of truancy referrals were because families were still on holiday overseas.
In some cases the parents kept children home because they could not afford uniforms.
"Especially if parents have the burden of more than two or three kids going to school."
About 1000 pupils had been referred to the Manukau office since the start of the school year. Ms Morehu said truancy seemed to be more common in children aged 6-8 years and 12-14 years.
National MP Anne Tolley raised her concerns about truancy with the Education Minister in Parliament last week. Ms Tolley said only four parents were prosecuted for having truant children last year, with 24 parents prosecuted since 2004.
"If the Minister is serious about cracking down on truancy, why does his ministry not know how many truancy prosecutions were taken by schools last year or how many district truancy workers there are on the ground throughout New Zealand?" she asked.
Minister of Education Chris Carter said the figure showing 31,000 truants a week was misleading.
"51 percent of those children were actually found to be at school and another 25 percent were found to be the children of people who had migrated from New Zealand, and that actually we had less than 1,000 [students truant]." He said it was up to boards of trustees to choose to prosecute parents.
"Of course, boards would be reluctant to reach that point without trying other things like mediation and intervention. In the end, though, that is a decision for the boards, not for the Ministry of Education."
He said prosecution is the final stage of a very long process of trying to get kids back to school.
"In fact, we cannot possibly know how many students were truanting, because it was not until this year that we established an electronic enrolment scheme that would finally tell us, for the first time ever, how many students were missing from New Zealand schools.
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