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lthough the Culture and Education Ministry has continued working to improve the welfare of teachers, it has found that there is no correlation between how much teachers earn and the quality of their work.

The ministry'€™s director general of elementary and secondary education, Hamid Muhammad, said the quality of education in the country was stagnant from 2000 to 2012 despite the fact that the ministry had increased annually the budget for improving teachers'€™ welfare.

'€œWe spend a lot [on teachers'€™ remuneration] but when asked whether there is a correlation between the spending and our students'€™ achievements, I have to say no,'€ Hamid said in a discussion in South Jakarta on Wednesday.

Hamid said the ministry had allocated Rp 74 trillion (US$5.4 billion) in 2015 for the remuneration of tenured and contract teachers and that the amount would increase to Rp 84 trillion in next year'€™s budget.

According to data from the ministry, there were 2.7 million civil tenured and contract teachers nationwide in the 2012-2013 academic year.

Hamid said that the ministry had also learned that the majority of teachers only sought out to participate in certification and specialization programs in order to receive extra benefits guaranteed by the 2005 Teacher and Lecturer Law, which was implemented in 2007, instead of looking to improve their teaching skills.

'€œWhen we first implemented the certification system, we hoped that it would improve the quality of our teachers, who will then receive remuneration. Now it is the other way around, teachers look for remuneration first and quality comes second,'€ he said.

The lack of improvement has been reflected in Indonesia'€™s results in the last Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), where Indonesia ranked 64 out of 65 countries.

However, Hamid said that the problem was not just the lack of motivation from teachers but also the lack of motivation from provincial administrations, which contributes to the much lower quality of teachers working in remote areas.

'€œAccording to the law, provincial administrations are responsible for improving and training their teachers while the ministry is only responsible for setting a standard and making sure that the standard is being met,'€ he said, adding that though some administrations were motivated, they did not have the capacity to finance or facilitate teachers'€™ training.

Meanwhile, Jim Tognolini, senior vice president of the Pearson Assessment Center, agreed that it was important to focus on improving teachers, but emphasized the need to assess what exact qualities the Indonesian government was looking for in its teachers.