Online coding and AI classes in the Piura region

From INEI's 2025 national census results, table 1 of the demographic indicators file: total population, people counted plus those INEI estimates were missed, on 15 September 2025, within the boundaries in force on 15 July 2026. Every figure is printed exactly as INEI publishes it, and no two rows have been added.

Where the rows come from: the General Education Law 28044 fixes six years of primaria and five of secundaria; MINEDU's normative-age rule takes the age a child has on 31 March; the CNEB study plan gives the secundaria hours. All three documents were checked in November 2026.

The ministry has a Python programme, but it is a small one far from Piura. Fábrica de Programadores, announced by MINEDU in July 2025, trains a first group of 1,000 public secundaria pupils in their last two years, all in Lima Norte, and graduates may take the PCEP certification exam. A teenager in Sullana or Paita who wants that kind of grounding has to look outside colegio, and that is the gap our evening and weekend classes in English are built to fill.

If English is a real barrier for your child today, tell us in the free class. A one-to-one plan lets a mentor go slower and repeat more, and some families start with a parent sitting in for the first few weeks. For learners at a bilingual colegio, the classes simply run in the language they already use at school.

import csv

latest = []
with open("mimercado_dataset.csv", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as market:
    for row in csv.DictReader(market):
        if row["FECHA_REGISTRO"] == "20260313":
            latest.append(row)

gaps = []
for row in latest:
    times = float(row["PRECIO_MINORISTA"]) / float(row["PRECIO_MAYORISTA"])
    gaps.append((round(times, 2), row["PRODUCTO"]))

gaps.sort()
print("Products on 13 March 2026:", len(gaps))
print("Smallest gap:", gaps[0])
print("Biggest gap:", gaps[-1])

Pork with the smallest gap sounds plausible until a student opens the row. Its wholesale price is labelled per UNIDAD and its retail price per KILOGRAMO. A unit and a kilogram are different things, so Version 1 divided one kind of quantity by another and called the answer a ratio. It is the same mistake as comparing the price of a sack of rice with the price of a kilo.

Version 2 adds two checks. If the two unit columns disagree, the row is set aside with a note. If they agree but the unit makes no sense for the category, the row is also set aside, because a matching label can still be the wrong label.

import csv

SENSIBLE = {"Frutas": {"KILOGRAMO"}, "Hortalizas": {"KILOGRAMO"},
            "Menestras": {"KILOGRAMO"}, "Legumbres": {"KILOGRAMO"},
            "Tuberculos": {"KILOGRAMO"}, "Carnes y huevos": {"KILOGRAMO"},
            "Cereales": {"KILOGRAMO"}, "Agro-industriales": {"KILOGRAMO", "LITRO"}}

kept, set_aside = [], []
with open("mimercado_dataset.csv", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as market:
    for row in csv.DictReader(market):
        if row["FECHA_REGISTRO"] != "20260313":
            continue
        unit = row["UNIDAD_MEDIDA_MAY"]
        if unit != row["UNIDAD_MEDIDA_MIN"]:
            set_aside.append(row["PRODUCTO"] + ": " + unit + " vs " + row["UNIDAD_MEDIDA_MIN"])
        elif unit not in SENSIBLE[row["CATEGORIA"]]:
            set_aside.append(row["PRODUCTO"] + ": sold by the " + unit + "?")
        else:
            times = float(row["PRECIO_MINORISTA"]) / float(row["PRECIO_MAYORISTA"])
            kept.append((round(times, 2), row["PRODUCTO"]))

kept.sort()
print("Compared:", len(kept), "Set aside:", len(set_aside))
print("Smallest gap:", kept[0])
print("Biggest gap:", kept[-1])
for note in set_aside:
    if note.endswith("?") or note.startswith("Carne de porcino"):
        print("Check:", note)

Now the smallest gap belongs to papaya, at 1.15, and the green broad bean still has the biggest, at 2.63. The second check caught something the first could not: the bellaco plantain has LITRO in both unit columns. The labels agree with each other, and both are surely wrong, because nobody sells plantains by the litre.

Then comes the twist that makes this a real lesson rather than a trick. The dataset's own description says: "La unidad de medida de los precios es por Kilogramo o por Litro, según la presentación del producto." In other words, the publisher says every price is per kilogram or per litre, and the SACO or MALLA in a unit column names how the product arrives at the market, not what the price is for. If that is true, most of Version 2's 19 set-aside rows were fine all along. A good programmer does not choose between the code and the description; they write down both, and ask the publisher. Version 2 still earned its place, because it is what made us go and read the description.

Data credit: GORE Piura, Mercado Modelo wholesale and retail prices, reused under ODC-By. The medians are ours, using only rows where both unit columns say KILOGRAMO, over all 151 market days. Across the whole file, 2,714 of the 7,464 rows carry two different unit labels, and 10 rows hold a zero price, so a program that divides on every date must handle that too.

1. Under 8, at the kitchen table. A bag of rice and a single cup of rice both have a price. Which is bigger? Why can you not say which is cheaper until you know how much rice is in each?
2. Block coding, around 8 to 10. Make two lists, wholesale and retail, for five fruits from the table, and a loop that shows which fruit has the biggest gap.
3. First Python, around 10 to 12. Run Version 1 yourself, then find the pork row and explain in two sentences why its answer cannot be trusted.
4. Ages 13 and over. Run Version 1 on every date instead of one. It stops with a ZeroDivisionError. Find the product and month that cause it, and decide what the program should do with a zero price.
5. Going further. Write Version 3, which follows the publisher's description: treat every price as per kilogram or litre, keep only the plantain on the check list, and compare its smallest gap with Version 2's.

Course ages are ours. School years follow MINEDU's normative ages measured on 31 March, so a child with a birthday after that date may sit one year below the row shown.

Families with younger children can read more on our page about online coding classes for kids in Peru, and on Python for kids in Peru, which explains when a child is ready to move from blocks to typed code. If your family plans to start during the January to March break, summer holiday coding classes online sets out a holiday plan of our own.

Clock facts: the tz database zone America/Lima puts Peru five hours behind UTC with no daylight saving since 1994, and INACAL keeps Peru's official hour; India sits five and a half hours ahead of UTC. The gap from Piura to India is therefore ten and a half hours, on every date.

Because no clock changes on either side, a slot fixed in January still falls at the same moment in August. The booking form asks for a time on your own clock and shows the mentor the matching India hour. When MINEDU opened the 2026 school year on 16 March, it counted 53,631 schools and 6,225,000 pupils nationwide; many Piura families begin during the long summer holiday, while afternoons are empty, and simply keep that hour once term starts.