There are fears that Wanganui will be subject to a series of school closures and mergers because of a large surplus of school places.
Labour's education spokesman Chris Hipkins said figures from the Ministry of Education said the Whanganui-Rangitikei network had more than 1400 surplus places in its secondary schools.
Last week in Parliament, he asked Education Minister Hekia Parata if she would rule out making further changes to the Whanganui-Rangitikei school network because of the surplus. She said she would "continue to monitor it".
Mr Hipkins said that, based on the experience of Christchurch and Dunedin schools, Wanganui may face mergers and closures.
"It may not happen straight away. Possibly in a year or two, but the minister has used surplus places as a reason to start mergers and Wanganui has a lot of surplus places.
"It's a case of connecting the dots."
Mr Hipkins said Ms Parata was given advice from ministry experts that there were 1407 surplus secondary school places in the region and 3107 surplus primary places.
He said the prospect of a partnership school opening in Wanganui, as reported by the Chronicle last Tuesday, would exacerbate the surplus problem.
"We've already got too many schools around the country and if you were to add even more places in Wanganui it would add more pressure to the existing state schools," Mr Hipkins said.
"There is a lot of pressure on schools because of falling rolls and there are significantly fewer school-age students in Wanganui today than there were 30 or 40 years ago."
Ms Parata was unavailable for comment but a representative for the Ministry of Education said the surplus places were calculated by comparing the difference between a school's capacity and its current roll and were monitored each year.
"This includes any changes to property at the school which may change a school's capacity and the roll changes, based on the distribution of student numbers within the various schooling year levels.
"The ministry uses school capacity, rolls and surplus/deficit of student places in its function of managing the network of schools and for providing school property."
The the representative said that one school, Rangiwahia School north of Palmerston North, had proposed it would close voluntarily as it had no students enrolled.
"Aside from this, there are no school closures or mergers in progress in the region."