Early childhood services want more evidence it will be safe to reopen next week and some are likely to remain closed.
The Government said schools and early learning centres can reopen on April 29 for children who cannot learn from home or whose parents are going back to work at alert level 3.
The Early Childhood Council, which represents more than 1000 early childhood services, had called for centres to remain closed until the country reached alert level 2.
The council's chief executive, Peter Reynolds, said he was disappointed the Government did not heed its call.
"The Government has heard that we're concerned and they've chosen to ignore and that's deeply disturbing," he said.
"We would hope that centres see sense with this. If they have any level of discomfort with the issue at all or their staff have a level of discomfort, then they'll choose the sensible path forward and not reopen at this moment."
Reynolds said the Government needed to provide the evidence that it was safe for early learning services to reopen.
The chief executive of Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand, Kathy Wolfe, said its 500 centre members appeared to be evenly divided over whether to accept children back at level 3.
"It varies from members who are really nervous about opening and feel the risk is really high to open, to others who absolutely understand that they are there to support parents who return to work," she said.
School principals appeared to be happier about the decision.
The president of the Principals' Federation, Perry Rush, said they understood that schools needed to reopen so parents could get back to work.
"The Prime Minister set us a challenge," he said.
"She's called on the teaching profession to be involved in this challenge on getting our country back on its feet again. I think principals are certainly up for that, they understand that it's important that schools are open."
Rush said the next step for schools was figuring out how many students and how many teachers were going to turn up on Wednesday next week.
"We certainly do not want to see any vulnerable teachers back at the physical site, they need to be at home working remotely."
The president of the Auckland Secondary Principals Association, Richard Dykes, said schools would not be able to provide much more than childcare during alert level 3.
"If a child does need to come to school, we will absolutely do that, we'll provide childcare and supervision, but it will be just that. Students will almost certainly be doing their online learning at school.
"Potentially half our staff will be at home anyway because of their particular circumstances."
The president of the Secondary Principals Association, Deidre Shea, said the starting point for reopening schools would be the measures required to protect student and teacher health during the two weeks of level 3.
"All the peak bodies, including SPANZ of course, have been working closely with the ministry to get out some really clear guidelines and rules I suppose around some of the basic health stuff so schools are in a position to open safely.
"That's got to give us the basis from which we can operate. Once we know that, we can make more nuanced decisions about the teaching and learning."
The Government said people would be allowed into schools and early learning centres from today for cleaning and other preparations ahead of a teacher-only day on April 28.
