SENATE Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano urged the government to invest more on education by providing decent compensation and benefits to public school teachers so they may have the means to effectively mold the young minds.

Cayetano made the call in his privilege speech yesterday to commemorate the celebration of World Teachers’ day and stressed the integral role of teachers in value formation towards national development.

“The kind of society we’ll have tomorrow depends on the kind of teachers we have today,” he said, citing a 1998 World Bank study that deemed the role of teachers as “the single most influential factor” behind a student’s performance.

The senator lamented the sorry state of the public school teachers who are considered to be among the country’s “poor sector” with their meager salaries and inadequate government support.

“Based on the Salary Standardization Law 3, the average starting pay of a public school teachers is P17,099. Estimated take-home pay after mandatory deductions such as Pag-IBIG and GSIS only amounts to P13,679,” he said.

He estimated that given a monthly rent of P5,000 for housing and a meal allowance of P50 a day for each family member in a family of six  amounting to P9,000, a teacher barely has enough to cover her own expenses.

The minority leader also expressed his alarm over the exodus of teachers who try to seek better employment abroad as he cited the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration’s (POEA) records that in 2010 alone, 882 teachers quit teaching and went abroad to become domestic helpers.