RA 10609: Protection of Students’ Right to Enroll in Review Centers Act

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Are you aspiring to get your professional license but decided to study by yourself due to financial problems?

Have you encountered problems applying for LET because your Alma Mater didn't allow you to get your TOR without enrolling in their own or in their prescribed review centers?

Worry no more. President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino signed Republic Act 10609 or he “Protection of Students’ Right to Enroll in Review Centers Act” .
Finally, there's now a law which protects the right of the students and professionals to enroll in the review centers of their choice. For the full context of this new law, please click here.

In the past years, I had a lot of friends who complained about compulsory review classes that they had to enroll as requirement for graduation, or as prerequisite in getting their official transcript of records, more specifically, the TOR with “For Board Exam Purposes Only” remarks. It was really troublesome because they had to spend more money, allot more time and exert more effort. There were also professionals who, after graduation, went back to their hometowns or lived in other places to work, and compulsory review lessons had caused them inconvenience as they had to go back, or at least travel once or twice a week to the school where they graduated. Moreover, there were also some professionals who wanted to review by themselves because of financial problems and because they find self-review more effective than group review.

Compulsory review can be helpful both on students/professionals' and on school administrators' part. After finalizing the list of Board Passers, the Professional Regulations Commission also releases the list of top performing schools, the schools which have high passing rate. It would be disappointing on the administrators not to see their schools on the list, and imposing this policy might increase the number of passers. I know that most people, after seeing their names on the board passers list, didn't even care to check the number of passers in their schools, but would it be nice to see your Alma Mater on the top-performing schools list?

However, forcing students/professionals to enroll in their respective or affiliated review centers have a lot of disadvantages. Imposing compulsory reviews as a prerequisite for graduation or as requirement to get the TOR is unfair. What if they transferred to other places to work? What if they went back to their respective hometowns? What if they wanted to review in other centers to try something new? What if their in-house review centers are overcrowded? What if they wanted to exchange ideas among students from other schools? In my case, the last three were the reasons that I chose not to enroll in our school's review center. Somehow, the school where I graduated did not force me to review in their center but they asked for a receipt as a proof that I enrolled at least in another review center because I had decided to take the LET more than three years after I graduated.