Parents have accused the Victorian Education Department of "whitewashing" sexual abuse after it deleted crucial information from their submissions to proposed new rules.
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In one case, the Department changed a parent's submission so it read that their child had been bullied at school, instead of sexually assaulted.
And in another instance it deleted a paragraph that said a child was removed from school because she was "threatening to kill herself".
It follows a major privacy breach revealed by Fairfax Media last month, which involved the Department publishing confidential information which identified children who had self-harmed, bullying victims and students' medical conditions.
Around 120 families were affected by the breach, which is now the subject of an independent investigation, and occurred when hundreds of submissions were uploaded to the department's website without personal details being redacted.
The online submissions were in response to proposed new education regulations which have been criticised by the home-schooling community for making it more difficult for parents to promptly withdraw their children from school if they are having issues.
They were taken down after the breach was identified, but were uploaded again this week.
Susanna Flanagan, who had her personal details published in the initial privacy breach, was shocked to discover that large chunks of her 45-page submission had been removed.
The missing text detailed how her child had began self-harming after their school failed to make adjustments for their disability.
"It was hard to write, but it was important that they understood the gravity of it, and why we had no choice but to home-school," she said.
One mother, who did not want to be named, had a sentence introduced to her submission which read: "it took six months for our son to feel comfortable to tell us that he was being bullied."
This replaced her sentence which said her son was sexually assaulted at school and did not tell anyone until after he had been home-schooled for six months.
"They have whitewashed it and tried to make it look better than it is," she said. "It changes the seriousness of what happened."
An Education Department spokesman said redacted information had been reinstated following several requests.
He said every submission was reviewed to ensure private information was redacted, unless there was written consent.
"We have been working painstakingly over the past five weeks with those whose privacy we regrettably breached," he said.
"Where redactions were made, the Department sent the revised versions back to the submitters, and requested permission to publish the submission online," he said.
But many parents said they had no idea that the content of their submissions would be changed, and simply wanted their personal details removed.
Coordinator of the Home Education Network, Susan Wight, said most of the redacted text reflected poorly on the school system.
"We believe redactions were made and attempted on this basis rather than to protect the privacy of submission makers. This is disrespectful to parents."
Disability advocate Julie Phillips said part of her submission - which was about an allegedly unqualified "behavioural analyst" employed by the Department - also disappeared.
"I was extremely disturbed, firstly at the deception of not being told, and secondly because it seemed that the Department was hiding information which was critical of them."
The Opposition's education spokesman Nick Wakeling said the claims were "deeply concerning".
"It now appears that the Andrews government is rewriting parents' stories in an attempt to downplay the prevalence of violence in Victorian school," he said.
