The study found that water samples from 59 of the schools analysed did not fully meet requirements. Photo: 123RF
Nearly a quarter of rural schools have substandard drinking water, according to a GNS study.
The GNS study which analysed water samples from 245 rural schools found that 59 of them did not fully meet requirements.
The study found E coli at 20 schools, while other schools had problems with arsenic, mercury, lead and manganese levels.
This can mean the need for expensive repairs and maintenance, with more than 400 schools around the country relying on their own water supply rather than a town connection.
Some rural schools with poor quality drinking water - research
New Zealand Rural Schools Leadership Association president Andrew King said although his school now has a new bore and state of the art water system, that was not always the case.
"We had issues with manganese levels and iron levels and a bore that was well overdue for replacement but of course you're reliant on additional funding and the process to get through to get that funding to replace it."
King said he knew of at least one school that has had to use bottled water for most of this year due to the arsenic levels in its water supply.
The school was doing what it could to address the issue, he said.
"It's just going through the system to try and get it dealt with in the manner it needs to be dealt with which is not fast enough."
Schools could apply to the Ministry of Education to pay for the bottled water "but it's quite a lengthy process to get to that point", he said.
Rural schools did not have a centralised way of collecting centralised information about their water services, but there was a process underway to try and get that data, he said.
"We've relied for too long on our self-governed schools to manage their own water services and that hasn't been monitored enough much beyond the monthly water testing."
Boards of trustees are a group of volunteer parents and rural school staff are experts in teaching and learning rather than water management, he said.
"Most of us don't have any of that skill and expertise that is required in really understanding whether our water services are up to standard and frankly there aren't enough people in our communities who can be that go-to person to support us."
Water systems for rural schools should be centralised and some form of quality assurance was needed, he said.
Schools also needed to be supported with the right expertise, there were two people in the Education Ministry who had that knowledge but two people for the whole country was not enough, he said.
Schools were required to have drinking water safety plans, but only about a third of schools had completed their water services plan, he said.
"The reason why the other two thirds have not got it done is because they don't have the expertise, the time, the resourcing to get it done and there's no additional resourcing being provided to get it done either."
King said he believed the best way to address increase the number of schools with water safety plans would be to contract one company or person with the necessary expertise to collect the data on behalf of schools.
"And then that solves another problem because it's efficient to have one company in charge of a standardised way of collecting all this information and then down the track it means the right data and consistent data's being collected."
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