A Muslim parent fears a support kit which is meant to help teachers spot children at risk of becoming radicalised will provoke extreme reactions from some teachers.

The Federal Government is sending the kits out to the nation's schools and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Counterterrorism Michael Keenan said it would be a valuable resource.

"We want to make sure that teachers and other frontline workers are able to identify people that might be at risk to violent extremism and intervene as early as possible to make sure they don't turn into a larger problem," he said.

But Kathryn Jones, who has five children, said she read the kit material online and considered its content divisive.

"Children already struggling a lot with being differentiated because they're Muslim, being antagonised about being bombers and terrorists — which is certainly something that my children have experienced too much — will have the spotlight on them even more," she said.

She expressed concern even innocent behaviours could be misinterpreted.

"Things like using your hand like it's a gun and pretending to shoot someone," she said.

"I heard a story from a friend that one young girl used her carrot like a gun and the teacher totally freaked out at her.

"It's going to push people to extreme reactions over childish things and not really get people looking at what's really going on."

Kit could 'build division, not cohesion'

Ms Jones said the spotlight was too often put on Muslim Australians.

"These decisions by government to get people to look for things actually build division among people, rather than creating that cohesion," she said.

The woman said the terrorism hotline introduced in the Howard government era had bred a mistrust of Australian Muslims and she was worried the new kit would cause the same impact on Muslim children.

Students with radical tendencies are the target of the kit which is being given to teachers. ( ABC News )

"[Former prime minister] John Howard did the same thing when he said if you see anything suspicious ring this number," she said.

"As soon as he said that suddenly we were being treated differently, even though I'm as Aussie as anyone out there.

"Just because I put a headscarf on and decided to become a Muslim I was being treated differently."

Associate lecturer David Olney, an expert on terrorism issues from the University of Adelaide, said the kit had a role to play.

He believed it could help teachers and that "any education is good education".

"Violent extremism, it's the boogie man. We don't know where it's going to come from, we don't know who it's going to be," he said.

"This document's making the point that one bad choice does not lead you to the end of the path of violent extremism and even if that is the only point that people take away from it, that is a positive in educational and societal terms."

But he said he considered some of the case studies in the government kit — including one which talked about a woman who was into "alternative music" and left-wing environmental activism — were patronising.

"The balance may not be perfect, it may range between being patronising in places and incomplete in others but, really, when you're trying to undertake a task like this in under 30 pages, it's probably about as good as it's going to be," he said.