Despite small year-to-year fluctuations, the rate of students in the Chinook School Division being homeschooled has stayed about the same over the past five years.

At Tuesday's school board meeting in Swift Current, Bob Vavra, the division's superintendent of schools, delivered a presentation on home-based education.

The total number of students being homeschooled this academic year is 131. In 2014-15 it was 136, then dropped to 123 the next year, rose to 130 the following year, and fell to 126 last year.

"The trend over the past five years has been up, down, up, down, up, down. Really it's been fairly consistent over the past five years," said Vavra.

Of the 131 students being homeschooled, 49 are doing it for faith reasons, and 82 are for programming reasons. For the first time none are doing it because of safety or security.

Vavra said there's been a shift toward more people being homeschooled for programming rather than faith reasons, though he's not sure why.

"I don't know and I'll have to dig into that. It just seems the biggest area, or reason why parents are putting their children into homeschooling is for programming choice. And I think that reflects our society and reflects the opportunities that are out there for kids not just in a school setting, but in a homeschool setting as well."

The board is reimursing families who do home-based education up to $300 per school year for each child for educational supplies.

Though the board only receives the money from the province if the students meet registration deadlines, and this year nine students did not but are still eligible for that reimursement.

"There are registration dates, and if students register after those dates, we do not get the funding that we would have if they would have registered on time. So, yes, the division is in fact kind of eating those costs," Vavra said.

Board Trustee Al Bridal was not impressed, and both he and fellow Trustee Gwen Humphrey said students that don't meet those deadlines should be getting the $300 while the board eats those costs.

"That's one of the changes we're looking at going forward," said Vavra. "I'm not sure whether the board will be involved in that. We heard some thoughts to that today, but we will be exploring that as we move forward."

Communication between the school division and parents of homeschoolers was considered a success in the report.

Vavra said they were able to communicate via email with parents for 128 of the 131 students. A year ago they started a digitization process.

"It's worked well for parents and for the school division," Vavra said. "Our communication is almost instantaneous now, whereas before it took weeks, and the information we can get out to them is much more vast than it was before; information about upcoming events in the community and things like that that we can share that can be very valuable to homeschoolers."

Despite that success, Vavra's report did state there have been challenges having parents get their documents in for learning plans, invoices, progress reports, as well as the registrations.