In both the Constitution of 1974, which located CPSC in Singapore, and the updated Constitution of 1987, which transferred it to the Philippines, the improvement of the quality of technician education and training was specifically identified as the primary purpose of the Staff College.
In 2003, a program was adopted to have a direct and profound effect on the quality of technical education when the CPSC Governing Board approved the CPSC Corporate Plan (2003-2008), including in particular, Goal 1 (Strategy 1.2); “Facilitate capacity-building to develop Accreditation and Certification system for the Asia Pacific Region in TET”.
Armed with the aforementioned mandate, under the leadership of the former Director General Dr. Man-Gon Park (2002-2007), CPSC convened an International Conference on Accreditation and Certification in December 2004 in Seoul, Republic of Korea to explore the possibility of setting up a regional body. With participants representing seventeen (17) member governments from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Sri Lanka, signing the CPSC Seoul Declaration 2004, the APACC was formed.
The International Conference was followed by a regional workshop on “Regional Accreditation Modeling and Accrediting the Accreditors” in August 2005 at CPSC, Manila, Philippines. The workshop was the first major convention to undertake the operational work of APACC, where the participants fortified the APACC accreditation criteria and instruments. It reinforced the Seoul Declaration 2004, advancing the commitment of member government representatives through a Manila Resolution of Commitment 2005.
This was followed by an Expert Meeting on Competence Building in APACC accreditation in June 2007 at Cheonan, Republic of Korea in which all the APACC documents were finalized and experts signed the affirmation of commitment.
From 2015 to 2017, the Memoranda of Agreements were signed with the member countries to encourage TVET institutions to undergo institutional accreditation using APACC standards and tap qualified individuals who may apply and be trained to be APACC Accreditors.
The implementation of institutional accreditation started in 2008, under the stewardship of Prof. Dr. Suresh Kumar Dhameja as the Coordinator of APACC. Since then, several review and revision of the APACC documents and processes were conducted.
