PARAÑAQUE City 1st District Rep. Eric Olivarez has filed a measure that seeks to strengthen the voluntary accreditation of private schools for continous quality improvement.

In pushing for House Bill 4526 or the proposed Voluntary Accreditation Act, Olivarez said that voluntary accreditation drives private schools, colleges and universities to exceed the minimum standards and guidelines required by the government to achieve recognition and prestige.

The lawmaker explained that accreditation is a means of promoting educational excellence through voluntary self-regulation and peer evaluation.

“In more than 40 years now, the voluntary accreditaton movement even without government financial assistance, succeeded in raising the quality of education at all levels of about 15 percent of the more than 2,000 private schools,” Olivarez said in his explanatory note.

House Bill 4526 seeks to motivate and enjoin private schools to undergo continuous quality improvement through voluntary accreditation and thereby ensure that the value and quality of education received by Filipinos is of high quality and comparable to the best in the world.

The bill recognizes some organization as authorized accrediting agencies including the Philippine Association of Accrediting Agencies of Schools, Colleges and Universities; the Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities-Commission on Accreditation; the Association of Christian Schools and Colleges Accrediting Association Inc.; and the Accrediting Association of Chartered Colleges and University of the Philippines.

The Federation of Accrediting Agency of the Philippines shall also be recognized as the sole organization to certify the accredited status of schools and their programs.

The bill also mandates the Department of Education and Commission on Higher Education to allocate budgets for the subsidy or funding assistance of accreditation activities by the FAAP and its members.