Police are investigating a string of bullying incidents at Lyneham High School, which left some families ''too scared'' to send their children to the inner-north school.
Two families say they have lost confidence in the ability of school authorities to protect their children.
But education officials have played down the seriousness of the problem at Lyneham.
One mother said her daughter was forced to defend herself against another Year 9 girl who had a history of violence. She said the girl who fought her daughter was supposed to be on her final warning.
The fight between the two girls was allegedly prearranged by other students so it could be recorded on mobile phones and posted on internet sites.
The ACT school system has been dogged by prearranged playground violence appearing on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
The Canberra Times reported in July that authorities were worried about the trend for school-yard attacks to be prearranged.
The Education Department said there had been 74 ''critical incidents'' in the system since a central register of serious incidents was established last year, with the number of incidents declining in all four quarterly reporting periods.
But the Lyneham mother said she was forced to withdraw her children from school and forward a sworn complaint to the Education Department after further incidents, in one of which her elder daughter was ambushed by bullies on the way to school and her younger daughter was threatened with a stabbing. ''The school has repeatedly failed to provide a safe environment to enable students to learn and appears ... to be backing bullies and perpetrators of incidents and bullying,'' she said.
Another Lyneham High School mother herself a former high school principal who withdrew her daughter from Year 7 classes after a string of attacks and threats said an ''awful atmosphere'' reigned at the school.
''The teachers are really hamstrung by the rules of the Education Department,'' she said.
''The teachers have got no rights and the students have all the rights and so the teachers' hands are tied as to what they can do.''
The Education Department declined a request for an interview with Lyneham High principal Colleen Matheson.
But a departmental spokesman said the families were reacting to a ''verbal altercation''.
''Certainly, there is no problem with violence at Lyneham High School and no families have contacted either the school or the ACT Department of Education and Training to express any concerns relating to this issue,'' the spokesman said.
''The school is following normal procedures and working hard to ensure any issues between the students involved are resolved,'' he added.
The spokesman said the school had discussed the incident with the family of one of the students allegedly responsible for the bullying and received an assurance it would not be repeated.
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