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he Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry is to review teachers'€™ welfare to boost the quality of education in the country, according to the country'€™s top education official on Monday.

Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Minister Anies Baswedan said he would address the issue with the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry.

'€œWe often forget the importance of teachers for this nation. We should have high appreciation for them and therefore the government will focus on their welfare,'€ Anies told a press conference at his office, ahead of National Teachers Day.

Teachers'€™ welfare is one of the main problems in the nation'€™s education system as teachers '€” especially those with temporary employment status '€” earn inadequate salaries.

'€œI'€™ve heard there are temporary teachers who cannot pay for their own child'€™s tuition. This has to stop,'€ Anies said.

Indonesian Teachers Association (PGRI) chairman Sulistyo said another urgent problem was the unequal distribution of teachers.

'€œTemporary teachers try to fill the gap [of the number of teachers] in a lot of areas across the archipelago but sadly they are underpaid,'€ he said.

Data from PGRI shows that in 2013 a temporary teacher'€™s monthly wage ranged from Rp 200,000 (US$17) to Rp 500,000 for working full time and having the exact same job description as a permanent teacher who earned more.

The data also shows that the level of teacher shortages increases every year, with 51,175 teachers in 2010 to 82,684 teachers in 2014 nationwide.

'€œI will talk with regional administrations and ask them to provide me with the number of teachers in those areas. We will identify areas that need more teachers and will deploy them from other areas that have a sufficient number of teachers,'€ Anies said.

He added that he would establish a new directorate general that would focus on managing teachers'€™ development to make sure that they could raise their quality through a structured program.

'€œWe will take the authority of teacher development management from regional administrations to the central government. I will make a new directorate general for that to give the teachers training,'€ he said.

Education Quality Improvement and Resources Agency head Syawal Gultom said the improvement programs would focus on individual work assessments and the quality of teachers would be improved through training programs both in classes and online.

'€œThe teacher-capacity building milestone, which has been in place since 2004, has not yet been able to deliver optimal teacher performance. Individual-based professional services must be reinforced,'€ he said.

Last December, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development'€™s (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed top performing countries in education, notably in Asia, place great emphasis on teacher development through selecting and training teachers.

According to the research, Indonesia has hit a low in its teacher training programs, as there are about 415 pre-service teacher-training institutions, but only 10 percent of them are public institutions.

The research also revealed that Indonesian students were ranked the second lowest in 65 countries, worse than the last PISA in 2009, when Indonesia ranked 57th.

Anies said he also hoped that the public could do more to help teachers.

'€œIf you own a store and a teacher buys something from there, you can give them a discount, or maybe let them have an earlier turn in a public transportation line,'€ he said.

According to Anies several companies had shown a positive response to give teachers more assistance in daily life.

He said the national flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, had confirmed that it would give 25 percent discounts on tickets for teachers, and added that more firms would follow suit.