The Government has started weekly reporting of school attendance as part of its strategy to get 90 percent of students going to school regularly by 2030.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said the data should help drive a national focus on attendance.
Seymour wants to see more data.
"At the moment, frankly, the Government has been flying blind," Seymour said.
The Government on Tuesday launched a portal to show how many students are at school every day.
"Students slumping out of attendance on Friday becomes clear straight away - it's an example of the kind of thing we hope to learn from having more of this data in real-time for people to understand," Seymour said.
The data can be broken down by region. Te Tai Tokerau Northland had the worst attendance rate last Friday with just 76 percent at school. While central and east Auckland had the highest with 86.1 percent.
"The winning region will have an engaged and educated population that will actually have more opportunities than those where students haven't gone to school," Seymour said.
Currently the data is updated weekly but the plan is for it to be refreshed daily next year.
School principals have previously told Newshub they're comfortable with the weekly reporting but daily reporting could cause issues - because it can often take days to get to the bottom of why a student was absent.
"The group of kids who are chronically absent. So that's attending less than half of the time, I don't think publishing the attendance data is going to change that," Labour leader Chris Hipkins said.
Turning around attendance is one of Seymour's education goliaths - another is school lunches.
"I'm making an announcement about quite a lot of detail that's gone into this tomorrow," Seymour said.
Newshub understands for some schools that could mean more packed lunches rather than hot meals.
"I think nutritious and delicious are great words and I think they could apply to what we're going to announce," Seymour said.
Parents will get the chance to chew over the details on Wednesday.
