Once-a-week online classes will have huge benefits

OUR weekend was happier than usual

as our 7-year-old grandson Ocean spent Monday with us, or more accurately at their house just a few houses from our residence. He normally has to return with his parents Mondays after the two-day weekend in our subdivision to their rental near his school in Xavier School in Nuvali, Calamba, which is an hour away.

The reason for this, his mother Mags told me, was that the school decided to make that Monday a “light modality session,” by which the students get their lessons online. The school explained that it wanted to be sure that its online system, which was started and undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020 to September 2021) still works, and its students as well as teachers don’t lose their skills in going online, which would also be a backup for bad-weather days, his mother Mags told me.

That got me thinking: Why don’t schools here follow Xavier and take advantage of that pandemic-induced system of online classes and have it weekly, preferably on Fridays? This would give students a three-day weekend, with their choice to have Friday devoted to tutorial classes which is getting to be popular among middle-class parents keen on ensuring that their children’s mental capacity is excellent, and is the practice for Japanese grade-schoolers since college there is only for the super-intelligent. Or for the children to follow the classical education principle of Mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body), and take up soccer, tennis, golf, taekwondo or judo classes.

The Philippines did not plan to become an online-schooling nation. It was pushed into it by a pandemic. But one of the quieter truths of those years — rarely acknowledged amid the noise of complaint — is that schools adapted far faster than anyone expected. Within months, teachers learned to teach on screen, students learned to submit work digitally, and parents learned that education could, at least part of the week, happen without a daily pilgrimage through traffic.

That experience should not be dismissed as a historical accident. It should be refined and institutionalized.

Value

The country should now move deliberately toward a “once-a-week online school day.”

This is not a proposal to revive lockdown schooling. It is a proposal to extract lasting value from what we already learned — to relieve families, unclog cities and train students for a world where online interaction is no longer a novelty but the norm. Indeed, most — or at least the majority — of bachelor’s degrees can be taken online, although here only through UP’s Open University, Mapua and National University, which they were doing long before the pandemic in order to give working students an opportunity to get bachelor’s degrees. The Asian Institute of Management, Ateneo and La Salle for the same reason offer fully online MBA while many universities in the US and the West also do so.

In this digital age, online schooling could give us another benefit.

One day a week without school commuting means one day without fuel, parking fees, tolls, jeep or tricycle fares, ride-hailing costs and even fees for drivers. These expenses are rarely itemized, but every parent knows how they add up. Add to that food spending — canteen meals, snacks, impulse purchases near campus — and a single online day becomes a quiet weekly subsidy to households, delivered without legislation or bureaucracy. We are also hit badly by at least a dozen typhoons annually, which have required schools to be closed down. Schools can just make it SOP to undertake online classes when typhoons are forecast to hit.

Multiply this across millions of students, and the aggregate savings are substantial. This is not abstract economics. It is cash that stays in family budgets.

Indeed, it is one way of addressing the horrendous traffic problem in Metro Manila and other urban centers.

School traffic is not incidental. It is synchronized. Morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups create predictable surges, particularly around dense school clusters — La Salle Greenhills, Poveda in Ortigas, Ateneo in Loyola Heights and dozens of similar corridors. Roads that function tolerably at noon become impassable twice a day because school schedules are rigid.

Traffic

Traffic systems are nonlinear. Remove even a fraction of peak-hour demand and congestion drops disproportionately. This is why work-from-home policies — studied extensively since the pandemic — have been shown to reduce commuting pressure and alter travel behavior even when adopted only part-time. A once-a-week online school day applies the same logic to education. It removes a block of compulsory trips from the road network, immediately and predictably.

No new flyovers required. No billions spent. Just fewer cars on Fridays.

But still, the most important argument is not logistical. It is educational.

The pandemic did not invent online interaction. It accelerated it. Meetings, presentations, collaboration and even decision-making, increasingly happen online in business, government and the professions. Hybrid work is no longer an experiment; it is standard practice in many sectors. Students who graduate without competence in online communication — clear writing, disciplined scheduling, structured discussion on screen — are less prepared for adult life.

Here, evidence matters.

As early as 2010, the United States Department of Education commissioned a major meta-analysis of online learning studies, covering more than a decade of research. Its conclusion surprised critics even then: students in online and blended learning environments performed as well as, and often modestly better than those in purely face-to-face settings. The strongest results were not for fully online instruction, but for “blended learning” — where online and in-person teaching complement each other (which is what a once-a-week online scheme offers). It was even found in some US schools that online classes help overly introverted students overcome their shyness, as they feel their classmates’ “gaze” not as much as they do in in-person classes.

More recent global research has moved decisively away from the simplistic “online vs classroom” debate. A 2022 second-order meta-analysis in the US — essentially a meta-analysis of meta-analyzes — found that distance and online learning show a small but statistically significant positive effect on learning outcomes compared with traditional instruction. The advantage is not dramatic, but it is real.

Blended

Even more relevant are the newer studies on “blended and flipped learning,” published in the US in 2023 and 2024. Large meta-analyzes consistently find that blended models often outperform classroom-only instruction, particularly when courses are designed intentionally rather than improvised. One 2023 synthesis concluded that pedagogy — not the medium — is the decisive factor, and that blended designs allow educators to exploit the strengths of both formats. Another found that blended learning improves not only academic performance but also student engagement — cognitive, behavioral and emotional.

This matters because it aligns exactly with what a once-a-week online day represents. Not a replacement of classrooms. Not an ideological bet on screens. But a “hybrid design,” modest in scope, strong in evidence.

The Philippine pandemic experience fits this research pattern better than critics admit. Schools were forced to adapt quickly — and many did. Teachers learned how to structure online discussions, assign independent work and assess students digitally. Students learned autonomy. Parents learned that learning does not require a building every single day. Was it perfect? Of course, not. But it demonstrated capacity.

The mistake now would be to pretend none of that matters.

A Friday online day allows schools to use each mode for what it does best. In-person classes remain central for socialization, laboratories, arts, physical education, mentoring and spontaneous discussion. Online learning excels at writing, research, quizzes, project coordination, presentations and consultations. Forcing everything into the classroom is inefficient. Forcing everything online is worse. Blending them is what the evidence supports.

Synthesis

Friday is ideal precisely because it encourages synthesis rather than overload. Lessons delivered earlier in the week can be consolidated online through essays, problem sets, group work and assessments. Teachers can run shorter synchronous sessions combined with structured asynchronous tasks. Students avoid the physical exhaustion of commuting at week’s end, while still engaging academically.

There are legitimate concerns about affordability for the poor, and they must be addressed honestly. Private schools can implement this immediately. Public schools will need phased approaches — shared devices, learning hubs, connectivity partnerships and offline-capable platforms. The pandemic already pushed the system in this direction. A once-a-week model is far easier to support than full remote schooling and allows targeted assistance rather than blanket solutions.

Just as important: Online days must not turn parents into substitute teachers. The pandemic taught schools how to design independent student work. Clear instructions, reasonable workloads, predictable schedules and teacher availability make autonomy possible. Online learning fails when it is chaotic, not when it is digital.

Teacher training is crucial. Research repeatedly emphasizes that effectiveness depends on design and instruction, not technology alone. Schools that invest in training teachers for hybrid delivery see better outcomes. This is not speculation; it is one of the most consistent findings across the literature.

The Philippines faces three simultaneous pressures: rising household costs, chronic urban congestion and a labor market that increasingly rewards digital fluency. A once-a-week online school day addresses all three with minimal disruption and immediate benefits.

Sometimes, the most sensible reforms are the least dramatic ones. And most important, it would give grandpas and grandmas another precious happy day.

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Once-a-week online classes will have huge benefits
Source: Breaking News PH