Yes, it is annoying. However, these are public communities where no Apple employees participate. Just fellow Pages users. So, no one from the Pages product team will answer your question here about why ToC page selection is landing mid-page and not top of that page.
The ToC page links work properly when you export the document with a ToC to PDF and open in Preview. Or by exporting to Word docx and opening that document in MS Word 16.99.2 (as an example). The ToC document links simply do not work at all in the current version (24.2.5) of LIbreOffice Writer. The ToC links also work properly when exporting to EPUB with reflowable text in Apple Books.
It makes no difference whether you generate the Pages ToC in a separate initial section. I see no means to fix this issue within the original Pages document short of the Pages product team deciding it is worthy of correction. You can submit direct feedback to that product team from the Pages application menu. Your choice of whether to categorize it as a bug or feature request. Do not expect any response from them, but if they do respond, it will be to your email associated with your Apple ID.