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She said many parents avoid registering their children with the province because of the difficulty working with certain school boards, whose members disapprove of non-standard forms of schooling.

As a result, it’s hard for parents to get access to resources, and even harder to get credit for a student’s out-of-class learning, she said.

Many home-schooled kids, therefore, skip the high-school diploma altogether and apply directly to universities, who she says are generally much more willing to accept alternative proof of academic achievement, such as SAT scores and online courses.

Berlus, a mother of two, says parents choose to educate their children at home for many reasons, ranging from frustration at educational budget cuts to scheduling problems to disagreements with the lecture-based format of conventional schooling.

She was introduced to home-schooling when her oldest son, who is gifted, became bored and depressed by the unchallenging classroom atmosphere.

After orginally setting him a strict curriculum, she now allows 11-year-old Leo to spend his days doing what he wants, which is often science experiments and computer games.

“I don’t do homework, I just learn from what I do,” was how Leo Berlus-Roy explained it in a phone interview.

Berlus said Leo is now organizing a multi-player role-playing game that includes reading a 90-page book, creating a story board and adapting that story to his characters — skills she says go beyond the school curriculum set out for children his age.

While she worries about some aspects of the new framework, her hope is it will lead to a dialogue with the government that helps to meet the needs of home-schooling parents as well as acknowledging what many of them are doing right.

“I think home-schoolers have been innovative, trying and experimenting and getting their children turned onto learning, and there’s a lot to learn from them,” she said.

“Instead of a confrontational approach between the traditonal system and home-schoolers, I feel we would all benefit if we work together.”