Online coding and AI classes in the Huánuco region

Taken from INEI's 2025 census, demographic indicators table 1, which reports each unit's total: those counted on 15 September 2025 plus an estimate for those missed, under the limits in force on 15 July 2026. The province rows are INEI's; we have not totalled them.

Enrolment from MINEDU's school census, reproduced by INEI in the 2026 compendium. A further table there (cuadro 5.27) lists 37.7 thousand Huánuco secundaria pupils in rural schools in 2025. We changed decimal commas only.

1. Finish secundaria. Every public route above requires it.
2. Choose a direction. A three-year technical programme at an IEST, or a university course after preparation.
3. Add programming early. A teenager who already writes Python arrives at either route with a head start.
4. Add English. Programming documentation, error messages and most online courses are in English; learning code in English builds both at once.
5. Keep a portfolio. Small projects, such as the inventory analysis below, show what a learner can do better than a list of courses.

Spanish-speaking families interested in data skills may like our Spanish-language page curso de data science en inglés, which works with a different Huánuco dataset. Our Python course page for Peru explains what a full Python course covers.

import csv
from collections import Counter

MONTHS = "Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec".split()

with open("inventario_gorehco.csv", newline="", encoding="latin-1") as f:
    items = list(csv.DictReader(f))

by_month = Counter(MONTHS[int(i["FECHA_PECOSA"][4:6]) - 1] for i in items)
print("Items:", len(items))
for month, n in by_month.most_common(3):
    print(month, n)

December holds 4,019 of the 10,291 items, more than three times any other month. It is tempting to write "the regional government buys 39 per cent of its assets in December" and stop. But a month is a big bucket. A real buying rush spreads over many days and many vouchers; a date typed in when nobody knew the real one piles everything onto a single day.

Version 2 looks year by year. For each year it finds the single most common date and asks what share of that year's items sit on it. If one date holds at least 80 per cent of a year with ten or more items, the program prints the year, how many distinct dates it has, and the most common voucher number on that date.

import csv
from collections import Counter, defaultdict

years = defaultdict(list)
with open("inventario_gorehco.csv", newline="", encoding="latin-1") as f:
    for item in csv.DictReader(f):
        years[item["FECHA_PECOSA"][:4]].append(item)

for year in sorted(years):
    items = years[year]
    dates = Counter(i["FECHA_PECOSA"] for i in items)
    top_date, on_top = dates.most_common(1)[0]
    share = on_top / len(items)
    if share >= 0.8 and len(items) >= 10:
        papers = Counter(i["NUM_PECOSA"] for i in items if i["FECHA_PECOSA"] == top_date)
        print(year, len(items), "items,", len(dates), "dates,",
              f"{share:.0%} on {top_date}", papers.most_common(1))

Two very different stories come out. In 1997 every one of 326 items has the same date, 31 December 1997, and the same voucher text, TAS 1997; fifteen of the 17 items from 1998 carry that same voucher text on 31 December 1998. One label on one date for hundreds of different objects looks like a bulk entry of older assets, not a day of shopping. We do not know what TAS stands for, and we do not guess.

The 2005 pile is different. 228 items fall on 30 December 2005, but under 102 different voucher numbers, the most common holding only 49 items. Many separate documents on one day is what a genuine year-end rush looks like. Same shape in Version 1, opposite meaning in Version 2.

Data credit: Gobierno Regional Huánuco, movable-asset inventory at 31 December 2023, reused under ODC-By. Counts and readings are ours; the regional government has not confirmed them. In the whole file, 1,317 items are dated 31 December of some year.

1. Under 8, with a calendar. If everyone in a class wrote "1 January" as their birthday, would that mean they were all born on the same day? What might have happened?
2. Scratch, roughly 8 to 10. Build a list of ten birthdays where six are the same day. Write a loop that counts each day and shows the biggest pile.
3. New Python coders, 10 to 12. Try Version 1, then alter it to count by exact date rather than by month, and print the five biggest dates.
4. Ages 13 and over. Drop the 1997 and 1998 TAS rows and count December again. Is December still the biggest month, and by how much?
5. Going further. Group items by the first word of their description after making it upper case, so that Escritorio and ESCRITORIO join. Which kinds of items cluster on 30 and 31 December?

Course ages are ours. MINEDU fixes grades by age on 31 March, so a child born after that date may be a grade lower.

Parents of secundaria students can read coding classes for teens in Peru for more on choosing a path.

America/Lima in the tz database is UTC minus five and has kept no summer time since 1994; INACAL is the authority for Peru's legal hour. With India at UTC plus 5:30, Huánuco trails Indian time by 10 hours 30 minutes throughout the year.

As neither country changes its clocks, a booking keeps the same local hour all year. Families planning to borrow a computer for the class often choose the hour when it is reliably free, and keep that slot.