Cost of maths tutoring in Peru, counted to the exam

1. At home or online. A tutor who travels to the family's home charges for travel time too; online removes it, and so removes the commute for the learner.
2. The level. Primaria arithmetic, secundaria algebra, admission-exam preparation, IB or IGCSE and university calculus are different jobs. Exam-specific work usually costs more.
3. One to one or a group. A private tutor's whole hour goes to one learner. Our maths groups have fifteen to twenty learners at the same level; one-to-one classes are the other option.
4. Lessons per week. Some fees buy one lesson a week, others two or more. Our monthly maths fee covers eight live classes, normally two a week.
5. How many months. The one families forget. A month of tutoring three weeks before an exam costs the same as a month in March, and does far less.

We never print other tutors' or academies' prices, and our own appears only in the fee cards below. Our Spanish guide to tutor prices converts school hours and travel into clock hours for a fairer comparison.

from datetime import date, timedelta

start = date(2026, 11, 16)                       # an invented first class, a Monday
exams = {
    "U de Lima school exam": date(2026, 11, 15),
    "PUCP Primera Opcion": date(2026, 11, 29),
    "PUCP Evaluacion del Talento": date(2027, 2, 21),
}
for name, day in exams.items():
    gap = (day - start).days
    if gap <= 0:
        print(f"{name}: too late, it falls {-gap} day(s) before the first class")
        continue
    print(f"{name}: {gap} days, {gap // 7} full week(s), about {gap // 7 * 2} classes at two a week")

print("Thirteen weeks after the start:", (start + timedelta(weeks=13)).strftime("%A %d %B %Y"))

The output makes the budget point by itself. Starting in mid-November leaves about two classes before PUCP's first-option exam, which is barely worth paying for as exam preparation, and about twenty-six before February, which is enough for real work. The same fee buys very different value depending on the date it starts. Accents are left out of the exam names in the code to keep the example simple to type.

1. Change the start. Set start to 1 March 2026 and run it again. How many classes would have fitted before U de Lima's exam?
2. Add an exam. Add the UNI ordinary exam of 10 August 2026 and see the guard catch it.
3. Count only school weeks. Harder: skip any week that falls in a school break from the RM 501-2025 calendar.
4. Explain it. In two English sentences, tell a parent why the start date matters more than the monthly fee.

The mentor, teaching from India, speaks in short plain sentences, puts each new term on the whiteboard, and is happy with answers given as numbers and working. EF's English Proficiency Index 2025 gives Lima 555, in its high band, so many Lima teenagers follow a clear maths lesson in English without trouble; others settle within a few classes. Because admission exams are in Spanish, we make sure each learner also knows the Spanish names of the ideas they learn, so nothing is lost on the day.