Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron yesterday vowed to bolster teacher salaries and improve training for educators at an international education conference held in Siem Reap.

Naron attended the International Teacher Task Force event yesterday, which runs from December 3 to 7, with some 300 policymakers, practitioners and research and development partners.

“Our main goal is to share experiences with each other on how to improve our teachers. We will reform the teachers’ salary and teachers’ training,” he said in a live video posted online yesterday. “Eighty percent of teachers were killed during the Pol Pot regime, so we had to develop our teachers’ capacity from zero.”

A salary increase from this year’s 800,000 riel (about $197) to 950,000 riel ($234) next year was flagged by Prime Minister Hun Sen in October, but the Cambodian Independent Teaching Association’s acting director, Ouk Chhayvy, said that salary was too low. “We support increasing teachers’ salaries but we would like the government and Ministry of Education to increase teachers’ salaries to 1,500,000 riel [$370],” she said.