Coding and AI for teens in Sullana, Peru

From INEI: the 2025 census tabulation of demographic indicators, tables 1 and 3 (reference day 15 September 2025; table 3 counts people enumerated), and the 2017 directory of populated places for Piura (22 October 2017), which lists Sullana as a single settlement and so undercounts a town that spreads into neighbouring districts. Never add these rows together.

Compendio Estadístico Perú 2026 (INEI, volume 1), household tables 11.5, 11.6 and 11.13, from the Encuesta Nacional de Hogares. These cover the whole Piura region; INEI publishes nothing for Sullana alone.

Where these come from: the CNEB study plan and its competency 28 (MINEDU), MINEDU's table of normative ages, and INEI, Compendio Estadístico Perú 2026, table 5.54 (MINEDU, Evaluación Censal de Estudiantes).

Programming is being tried in a few state schools: since 2025 a MINEDU scheme called Fábrica de Programadores has taught Python, ending in the PCEP exam, to 1,000 pupils in the final two secundaria years in Lima Norte. Sullana is outside it. Our overview of coding classes for teens in Peru sets the national picture beside our own course path.

Course names and order are ours. The age column for AI tools follows each provider's published terms and our own AI tools age audit.

Teenagers who want phone apps will find more detail in our page on app development for teens in Peru, including what accounts and app stores allow at each age.

A practice problem of ours. A queue of applicants is sorted by score. The lowest admitted score is 170.65 and the highest score that missed out is 170.50. A new applicant scores 170.60. Without knowing anything else, can you say whether they would have been admitted? (Ours, written for this page. Answer: no, you cannot be sure; it depends on how many places were left and on the rules for ties, which the scores alone do not tell you.)

ONEM details: UGEL 06 circular (Oficio Múltiple 164-2026) and an El Peruano report of 11 October 2026. OPI details: UTEC's site opi.utec.edu.pe and its 2025 rulebook. No contest problem or official solution appears on this page.

For a fuller picture of olympiad preparation, our page on maths olympiad coaching in Peru describes how we train reasoning with original problems.

import csv

admitted, missed = [], []
with open("postulantes-unp-2024-2025.tsv", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    for row in csv.DictReader(f, delimiter="\t"):
        programme = row["ESPECIALIDAD,ANIO_POSTULA"].rsplit(",", 1)[0]
        if programme == "INGENIERÍA INFORMÁTICA":
            score = float(row["CALIFICACION_FINAL"])
            if row["INGRESO"] == "SI":
                admitted.append(score)
            else:
                missed.append(score)

print("Applications:", len(admitted) + len(missed), "admitted:", len(admitted))
print("Lowest admitted score:", min(admitted))
print("Highest score not admitted:", max(missed))

A score of 0 admitted and a score of 250.65 turned away looks like a scandal. It is not; it is a grouping mistake. Applicants do not all compete in one queue. The MODALIDAD column shows several admission routes, each a separate competition with its own places: general exams held in April 2024, September 2024 and March 2025, and two rounds the file labels ADES and ADES 2025. Comparing scores across routes is comparing different races.

import csv

queues = {}
with open("postulantes-unp-2024-2025.tsv", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    for row in csv.DictReader(f, delimiter="\t"):
        programme = row["ESPECIALIDAD,ANIO_POSTULA"].rsplit(",", 1)[0]
        if programme == "INGENIERÍA INFORMÁTICA":
            key = (programme, row["MODALIDAD"])
            pair = queues.setdefault(key, ([], []))
            score = float(row["CALIFICACION_FINAL"])
            pair[0 if row["INGRESO"] == "SI" else 1].append(score)

for (programme, route), (admitted, missed) in sorted(queues.items()):
    low, high = min(admitted), max(missed)
    verdict = "consistent" if low > high else "check by hand"
    print(route, "| admitted", len(admitted), "| lowest in", low, "| highest out", high, "|", verdict)

With the key changed from the programme alone to the pair (programme, route), three of the five queues behave exactly as a ranking should: in the September 2024 exam the last admitted score, 170.65, beat the first one left out, 170.50, by fifteen hundredths of a point. The 250.65 that missed out was in the ADES round, where the lowest admitted score was 254.75.

Two queues still break the rule. In the April 2024 exam, five admitted scores, 0.0, 87.0, 99.9, 108.25 and 143.3, sit far below the next one, 174.75; in March 2025 four sit below 162.0. A good analyst does not invent a reason. Some places may be reserved under separate rules, but this file has no column that says which applicants those were, so the honest program prints "check by hand" and stops there. The missing key is not in the data.

Data: Universidad Nacional de Piura, Lista de Postulantes Pregrado 2024-2025, datosabiertos.gob.pe, licence ODC-By. Counts and extremes are ours. Applications from schools in the province of Sullana: 1,521, of which 144 were admitted; 71 were to Ingeniería Informática, of which 5 were admitted. MINEDU figures in INEI's 2026 compendium put the university's enrolment at 12,713 in 2025. We name no school and have no connection with the university; admission decisions are the university's alone.

1. First Python, 13 and 14. Count how many applications each route has for Ingeniería Informática, using a dictionary. Which route is the biggest?
2. Ages 15 and 16. Run Version 1 and Version 2, then write three sentences for a younger student explaining why the first answer was misleading.
3. Ages 16 to 18. Repeat Version 2 for every programme in the file. How many (programme, route) queues are consistent, and how many need checking by hand?
4. Going further. Filter applications by the province of the applicant's school. Explain why you must still compute each cut-off over the whole queue, not just over applicants from Sullana.

The admission exams themselves are in Spanish and are set by each university; our guide to Peru's university admission exams explains how they work. We teach coding and reasoning in English, and we never promise a place.

Peru stays on UTC minus 5 hours in every season (tz zone America/Lima; legal time from INACAL); India stays on UTC plus 5 hours 30 minutes. The difference is 10 hours 30 minutes on every day of the year.

During term most Sullana teenagers choose late afternoon or early evening, after school and before homework. In the long January to March break many take a morning slot, then keep a later one when school restarts. Because neither country changes its clocks, the hour agreed at the start stays put all year. More on Piura-wide options is on our Piura region page.