By Peter Alagos/Business Reporter

The Qatar National School Accreditation (QNSA) unit for private schools has granted the Philippine School Doha (PSD) institutional accreditation for three years, Principal Dr Alex Acosta told Gulf Times.
Acosta said QNSA visiting team chair Dr Mohamed Bedair awarded the certificate on June 3 during a ceremony held at the Qatar Evaluation Institute. He noted that the PSD administration waited for three years to get accredited.
From March 1 to 5, members of the QNSA evaluation team were at PSD campus, located at the Old Murror, Al Messilah area. It was composed of Azza al-Sherif, Abdelmoniem Sati, Waleed al-Mahdy, Dr Abdullah Ebrahim, Mohamed Sultan, Mona al-Qaddomi, Hadil al-Olaibi, Sa’ad Abdulwahhab, Khalid al-Qatoof, and Fo’ad al-Hosain.
According to Acosta, the PSD will be renamed as Philippine Science School Doha (PSSD).
“The accreditation realises our vision to become the first Philippine science school in the Middle East. We are now in the process of informing the Department of Education (DepEd) back home for the renaming of the school,” Acosta explained.
He added, “Being QNSA-accredited is not only recognition from the Supreme Education Council (SEC), it means that we have reached a higher level of education standards. All schools are required to be accredited but not all schools have passed that standard.
“We have a lot of things to be proud of such as being the first Philippine science school in the Middle East, and we have also proven that PSD caters and offers quality education that is at par with international standards.”
Acosta noted that one of the biggest challenges for PSD during the accreditation process was the limited space of its campus.
“I really did not expect that PSD will be granted accreditation because of the limited space we have in our current campus. But we were relieved when we received word that we are able to hurdle across this huge challenge,” Acosta said.
He also said the QNSA accreditation will also create a significant impact in the school administration’s plans to relocate to its new campus in Abu Hamour within two years.
“Hopefully, within the year construction would already start. The entire campus would be operational in two years,” he said.
The new PSD campus, located on a 14,375sq m plot donated by the Qatar government in Abu Hamour, features a building and facilities like laboratories and a gymnasium estimated to reach about QR100mn.
The bidding process for construction of the purpose-built educational facility was started on February 12 after the project got the final approval from the General Directorate of Civil Defence (GDCD).

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