Back to online learning

Regular classes are ending and it’s graduation season in many schools, so the CHED guideline will cover mostly higher education institutions with trimester systems and those holding summer classes.

As the Middle East crisis drags on, however, energy experts are warning that it could take time for the fuel situation to normalize. Some quarters have therefore expressed fears that CHED might be tempted to prolong or normalize the 100-percent online class policy, extending it to the next school year.

This happened at the height of the COVID pandemic, when schools in the country shifted to remote or hybrid modes for two years – the longest in the world.

While the shift was seen as necessary to continue formal education during the worst health and economic crisis faced by the nation, education officials and advocates have said that the remote learning mode proved to be a setback, widening learning gaps and worsening the crisis in Philippine education.

The problems that plagued those two years of pandemic education persist to this day, particularly in low-income communities: the lack of the needed devices as well as internet connectivity, and homes that cannot provide the proper learning environment.

Students from affluent families don’t have such problems; exclusive schools can shift seamlessly to online learning modalities. But in the public school system, only a handful of state universities and colleges led by the University of the Philippines can do the same.

The continuing national energy emergency calls for drastic fuel conservation measures as uncertainty persists in the Middle East situation. Shifting to online learning modalities can help reduce fuel consumption. But the government must ensure that emergency responses remain just that: good only for the duration of the emergency.

Philippine education is already in a dire situation. It cannot be aggravated by another type of crisis.