IT error loses 644 Qld child abuse reports

An embarrassing system failure at the education department has prevented 644 reports of suspected child sexual abuse at Queensland public schools from reaching police.

Two staff - a contractor and a departmental employee - have been stood aside while a review takes place into the computer glitch.

Education Minister Kate Jones says the system was implemented on January 22, when the former Liberal National Party government was in caretaker mode, but there had been no proper testing carried out.

She says a principal told the department of the failure on Thursday, which stopped category three, or lower-tier, suspected sexual abuse complaints from reaching police.

Principals had been receiving receipts from the system to let them know a complaint had been sent, but the coding error meant police never received them.

Ms Jones has launched internal and external reviews and steps were taken on Thursday night to immediately fix the error.

"I'm deeply sorry that this situation has occurred," she said.

"But I'm also extremely angry that you would go through with a change in January to an IT system without running the proper checks and balances.

"We owe it to Queensland students to do better than that."

Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Cameron Harsley said 520 of the 644 unreported cases had already been reviewed.

"We haven't identified any particular matter where a child has been subject to any abuse between the period of time we're talking about," Mr Harsley said.

The investigations and review of the matters is continuing, he said.

Education Queensland's director-general, Dr Jim Watterson, will oversee the internal review.

Shadow education minister Tim Mander said in a statement it was "deeply concerning" that the IT error went undetected for half a year.

"The problem must be fixed immediately," he said.

Hetty Johnston, founder of child protection advocacy group Bravehearts, said while the glitch was probably a simple human error, the blunder could have enormous consequences for children's welfare.

"This is not something to get wrong with a `whoops'," she told AAP.

"Every single one of them needs to be followed up and we need to look into the lives of those little people and find out what's going on."

She applauded Ms Jones for her decisive action of standing aside the two staff members.