At traditional brick-and-mortar high schools in Ontario and across North America, students are expected to move through course material at a uniform pace with the rest of the students in their classes.
These students have little to no control over how they pace their studies. Rather, their pace is determined for them by their teachers, curriculum, and school board. They are expected to meet deadlines and are penalized when they fail to do so. Learning at a uniform pace is called synchronous learning and it does not benefit all students.

Traditional learning where students are in a classroom with their instructor and fellow students engaging with their education in real-time, is synchronous learning. Quite literally, this is because in a classroom setting, students learn in sync with their peers.

You could trace the dawn of synchronous learning to, well, the dawn of education, and still to this day it’s what many older adults think of when they think of school.

At OES, we value flexibility. With our online courses, we empower our students to have more control over their schooling and make it easier for students to manage their schedules and stay productive because they can work at their own pace.

This flexibility is especially important for busy students who don’t have the luxury of treating school as a full-time job, but is only effective when paired with good academic habits.

Traditional brick-and-mortar high schools in Ontario tend to not offer much flexibility. The majority of students commute to school at 9 am, take classes until 3 pm, go home, and repeat. Then, if they are involved in sports or extracurricular activities, they will spend even more time at school.

This rigid routine may work for students with enough time to treat school as a full-time job, but not for busy students, including mature students, who have obligations outside of school, like families and jobs.

Social workers swoop in during times of emergency and crisis, fight for individual and social justice, and relieve people of their suffering. Chances are someone you know has been helped by a social worker at some point in their life, and chances are they’re thankful.

Before the rise of online high school courses in Ontario, students typically had to attend traditional, brick-and-mortar secondary institutions to get their diplomas. Excluding those who attended in-person private schools, students had no choice but to attend public schools within their particular geographical regions—that is, within their “boundary maps.”

These students often had few public schools to choose from, especially those who lived in underpopulated and rural areas. Students living in wealthier boundary maps tended to have access to public secondary schools with more funding, resources, and one-on-one attention, as well as higher retention and graduation rates.

When you have a family and a full-time job, studying and taking classes can often feel like a daunting undertaking and leave you with little to no personal time. At OES, we offer flexible online courses so that our students, including mature students, can maintain a work-life balance.
Our courses are more convenient and flexible than in-person courses offered by traditional brick-and-mortar high schools in Ontario. When you take online courses at OES, you can choose to set your own pace.

Businesses make the world go round, so it’s surprising that many high schools in Ontario don’t offer the right courses to sufficiently prepare their students to study business at the post-secondary level.

As a result, students often arrive at their first university or college business classes underprepared and overwhelmed. It’s like they’ve been thrown into a hockey game without being handed a stick. They’re lost on the ice.

In Ontario, about 9/10 adults have high school diplomas. The 1/10 who don’t face challenges and difficulties unique to them.

Clearly, there are many benefits of having a high school diploma. That’s what we’ll look at here, as well as why it may be a good idea to take online classes for high school credits in addition to classes at a traditional brick-and-mortar high school.

It’s one of the biggest questions a student has to answer in their senior years of high school: Where do I go after this? Choosing a college or university isn’t just a matter of selecting an institution; it’s a time for reflection too. As you say goodbye to high school, you reflect on what you want for your future and what you value in an education. You do not have to know what you want to be when you grow up, but it’s smart to set yourself up for success – whatever that success may look like.