Documents obtained by Labour Party education spokesman Chris Hipkins showed the ministry planned to sell $160 million worth of school houses.
He described the move as ''a fire sale'' of school houses and land, which was ''short-sighted, mean-spirited'' and would have unintended consequences that the country would pay for in years to come.
However, Ministry of Education education infrastructure service head Kim Shannon said houses would be sold only if schools wanted them to be sold.
Mr Hipkins said school houses were often an essential part of attracting teachers to hard-to-staff schools, particularly in rural areas.
''They also allow school caretakers to live on-site, providing huge benefits in terms of security and allowing public access to school facilities outside school hours.
''Just this week, a newspaper report highlighted the lack of suitable, attractive housing as a barrier to recruiting teachers in rural areas.
''National's planned fire sale will only make those matters worse.''
When rural schools could not attract teachers, and the bills for increased vandalism rolled in because there was nobody on site to keep an eye on school properties, the Government would ''scurry for the hills'' and leave schools to clean up the mess, Mr Hipkins said.
''National is asset stripping valuable assets in order to meet the financial shortfalls caused by their economic mismanagement.''
Ms Shannon agreed school houses gave potential teaching staff an incentive to move to rural areas.
But as towns and transport networks had grown, many schools no longer needed their houses, and had been dispensing with the surplus buildings for many years.
There were 237 school houses in the Otago and Southland regions, of which 29 were in the disposal process, she said.
Many of the buildings were old and unused, and were no longer needed by the schools.
''Schools have the choice whether to sell or retain their houses, so we cannot predict how many will be sold in Otago and Southland, nor what the market rates will be for those that are sold.''
Ms Shannon said a policy update last year meant schools could retain all the proceeds from selling their surplus houses. Previously, they had received half.
The money from the sales was used to modernise and upgrade classrooms, to ensure pupils had the best possible learning environments, and that any funds raised from sales were on top of the funding the ministry already provided school boards of trustees, she said.
All properties selected for disposal go through a series of steps prescribed under the Public Works Act 1981, whereby they are first offered to other Government agencies, previous owners and local iwi, before being put on the open market.
