Online coding and AI classes in the Cajamarca region

The free first class is designed as an honest test. The mentor gives a small puzzle in simple English and watches how the learner follows. If the English is a real barrier, the mentor will say so and suggest waiting, a private plan, or a different starting point. Spanish-speaking parents can read our Spanish guide to clases de programación para niños online en Perú before deciding.

import csv

schools = rural = 0
with open("padron-cajamarca.csv", newline="", encoding="latin-1") as padron:
    for row in csv.DictReader(padron, delimiter=";"):
        if row["NIVEL"] == "Primaria" and row["ESTADO"] == "Activa":
            schools += 1
            if row["AREA"] == "Rural":
                rural += 1

print("Active primary schools:", schools)
print("Rural:", rural)
print("Rural share:", round(100 * rural / schools, 1), "%")

Eighty-three per cent sounds like an answer to "do most children study in rural schools?", and many people would stop here. To answer that question we need to add up pupils, not schools. Trying it straight away fails, because the enrolment column sometimes says "No Cuenta" instead of a number, and int("No Cuenta") stops the program.

import csv

pupils = {"Rural": 0, "Urbana": 0}
schools = {"Rural": 0, "Urbana": 0}
no_count = 0
with open("padron-cajamarca.csv", newline="", encoding="latin-1") as padron:
    for row in csv.DictReader(padron, delimiter=";"):
        if row["NIVEL"] != "Primaria" or row["ESTADO"] != "Activa":
            continue
        enrolled = row["TOTAL_ESTUDIANTES_MATRICULADOS"].strip()
        if not enrolled.isdigit():
            no_count += 1
            continue
        schools[row["AREA"]] += 1
        pupils[row["AREA"]] += int(enrolled)

print("Skipped, no number:", no_count)
share_schools = 100 * schools["Rural"] / sum(schools.values())
share_pupils = 100 * pupils["Rural"] / sum(pupils.values())
print("Rural share of schools:", round(share_schools, 1), "%")
print("Rural share of pupils:", round(share_pupils, 1), "%")
for area in ("Rural", "Urbana"):
    print(area, "pupils per school:", round(pupils[area] / schools[area], 1))

Version 2 makes three changes. It skips the 79 active primary rows with no number, and says how many it skipped, so nobody is misled. It adds the enrolment column for each area. And it reports both shares side by side. Among the schools with a number, 83.4 per cent are rural, but they teach 43.9 per cent of the primary pupils, because the average rural primary school had 25.8 pupils and the average urban one 165.2. Both answers are correct; they answer different questions.

Data: Gobierno Regional de Cajamarca, Padrón Regional de Instituciones Educativas de la Región Cajamarca, ODC-By. All counts, shares and averages are ours, from the 2019 cut-off in the file. Rows marked "No Cuenta" (79 in primaria, 67 in secundaria) are left out. Among the 3,780 active primary rows, 1,221 are described as single-teacher schools (Unidocente) and 1,956 as multigrade schools with several teachers (Polidocente Multigrado).

1. Under 8, with toys. Put three toy schools in a row. Give two of them one doll each and the third ten dolls. Are most schools small? Are most dolls in small schools?
2. Blocks, around 8 to 10. Make two lists, school sizes for five villages and for one town. Count the villages, then add up the children. Which number is bigger, and why?
3. First Python, around 10 to 12. Run Version 1, then change it to count secundaria instead. Predict the share before you run it.
4. Ages 13 and over. Remove the isdigit check from Version 2 and read the error. Then put it back, and print the names of the levels where "No Cuenta" appears most.
5. Going further. Work out the same two shares for each UGEL. In which UGEL is the gap between the share of schools and the share of pupils widest?

Contests are open to Cajamarca pupils as to every pupil in Peru. The ONEM maths olympiad starts in each school; in 2026 its first round was on 8 July and more than 1.7 million pupils took part nationwide. UTEC's OPI programming olympiad is free for secundaria students. We are not connected with MINEDU, UTEC or either contest, and teach with problems we write ourselves.

INEI, Compendio Estadístico Perú 2026, tomo 1, cuadros 11.5, 11.6 and 11.13, from the Encuesta Nacional de Hogares. Decimal commas shown as points.

Our suggestions only. A child's grade follows MINEDU's age on 31 March, so two classmates can be almost a year apart in age.

University students can read our Spanish guide cursos de programación para universitarios en Perú, and anyone weighing Python can see our Python course page for Peru. The national overview is coding and AI classes in Peru.

Peru: UTC minus 5 hours throughout the year, no daylight saving since 1994 (tz database, America/Lima). India: UTC plus 5 hours 30 minutes. Cajamarca is always 10 hours 30 minutes behind India.

Neither country changes its clocks, so a time agreed once holds all year. You choose the hour in your own clock when booking. Peru's 2026 school year started on 16 March 2026; families with school children often begin in the January to March holidays, while adults simply start when they are ready.