Jakarta – National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh says half of Indonesia's labor force is comprised of primary school graduates, some of whom have not even completed six years of basic education.

As a result, the ministry has formed three programs to increase the average level of education to at least the high school level, he said.

"One of them is improving access [to education] by working to improve its availability and affordability," Nuh said on Wednesday as reported by kompas.com.

He added that the ministry has created the Target Mission Scholarship to assist 20,000 students per year. State-owned universities offer similar scholarship programs to students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, he said.

The universities handed out scholarships to 30,000 students from poor families, bringing the total number of scholarship recipients to 50,000 students, Nuh added.