Around 41,000 children in Central Visayas do not have access to education, the database of the Department of Social Welfare and Development 7 showed, a government press release said.

The agency's National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction, conducted on July 2011 using the Proxy Means Test, showed that 41,634 individuals in Central Visayas aged six to 25 years have not completed any grade level.

The biggest chunk of this number at 22,524 is in Cebu, followed by Negros Oriental - 12,392, Bohol - 6,327, and Siquijor - 391.

More than half, or about 58 percent of the total poor individuals, age six to 25, were sent to public schools and only one percent studied in private schools. The database also showed that 41 percent poor individuals were not able to attend school because of poverty.

The DSWD uses PMT as a statistical model that estimates the income of households based on housing conditions, household composition, access to basic services and education of household members.

Using the model, the government can predict the income of a household and compare it to the poverty threshold of the province, and classify whether the household is poor or not, the press release also said.

DSWD shared and adopted the system as a mechanism in identifying poor households to determine beneficiaries of social protection programs and services, like the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, Sustainable Livelihood Program, and the Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens.

DSWD-7 is encouraging local government units and non-government organizations to use available data in formulating appropriate social protection programs and services specifically to address the education problem in the region.

New features have been added to the PMT model for the second round of household assessment to minimize inclusion and exclusion error rates, the press release said.

The assessment will be conducted in the second semester and will include two PMT sub-models, one for the National Capital Region and one for all other regions, community variables through the Barangay Community Characteristics as determinants of poverty status, and a second stage screener to flag possible inclusion errors or non-poor being included in the list of poor individuals.*PNA

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