Peru curriculum

Overview

Peru's school system is run under the national framework set by the Ministerio de Educación (MINEDU), the federal education ministry, through the Ley General de Educación (Ley N.° 28044). Basic education (Educación Básica) has three modalities — Regular, Alternative and Special — and almost all school-age children attend the Regular modality, Educación Básica Regular (EBR). EBR has three levels: inicial (initial/pre-primary), primaria (primary), and secundaria (secondary). This file covers that overall structure and the curriculum MINEDU sets for it, the Currículo Nacional de la Educación Básica (CNEB), and how students are assessed along the way. University admission exams, which each Peruvian university runs on its own (for example, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos's own admission exam), are covered in their own separate programme files and are only cross-referenced here.

Who it covers

Peru's Constitution makes inicial, primaria and secundaria education compulsory. Inicial serves children from birth to age 2 in a non-classroom ("no escolarizado") format and children aged 3 to 5 in a classroom ("escolarizado") format; only the 3-5 classroom years are compulsory. Primaria follows for 6 years from around age 6, and secundaria follows for 5 years from around age 12, typically finishing around age 16 or 17. EBR groups these years into seven learning cycles (Ciclo I through Ciclo VII) that the CNEB uses to set expected competency levels, rather than treating every single grade as its own curricular unit.

Structure

Inicial

Inicial is the first level of EBR. The non-classroom years (Ciclo I, ages 0-2) reach children mainly through community- and family-based programmes rather than a standard school setting and are not compulsory. The classroom years (Ciclo II, ages 3-5) are compulsory and are usually delivered through jardines (kindergartens) or PRONOEI community programmes, preparing children for the transition into primaria.

Primaria

Six years of primary school (grades 1 through 6), spanning Ciclo III (grades 1-2), Ciclo IV (grades 3-4) and Ciclo V (grades 5-6) of the CNEB. Primaria aims to give every child a common foundation in literacy, numeracy and the other competencies the CNEB sets out before they move into secundaria.

Secundaria

Five years (grades 1 through 5 of secundaria, commonly counted as grades 7 through 11 of a student's overall schooling), spanning Ciclo VI (the first two years) and Ciclo VII (the final three years) of the CNEB. Secundaria offers a common general curriculum together with technical and work-oriented learning areas (educación para el trabajo) intended to leave graduates ready either for further study or for the job market.

Curriculum standards

MINEDU sets one national curriculum for inicial, primaria and secundaria: the Currículo Nacional de la Educación Básica (CNEB), approved in 2016. The CNEB is built on a competency-based approach: it defines a student "exit profile" (perfil de egreso) for the end of EBR, a set of transversal approaches (enfoques transversales) such as an intercultural, inclusive, environmental and rights-based outlook that runs across every subject rather than being taught as its own class, and competencies that each combine several specific capacities. The CNEB sets 31 competencies for EBR overall (30 of them already in play by the end of primaria), each one developed progressively across the seven cycles through defined learning standards and observable performance expectations at every cycle. Among the competencies the CNEB adds for current demands are English-language proficiency, ICT (information and communication technology) use, and work-readiness skills, alongside areas such as arts, culture and physical education.

Assessment approach

Day-to-day promotion through inicial, primaria and secundaria is managed by each school through continuous, classroom-based assessment against the CNEB's competencies and standards, using a single rating scale that runs across all three EBR levels; there is no single pass/fail national exam a student must clear to move up a grade. Separately, MINEDU's Oficina de Medición de la Calidad de los Aprendizajes (UMC) runs the Evaluación Censal de Estudiantes (ECE), a standardised test applied in selected grades across public and private schools nationwide to measure how well students are learning against the CNEB and to track outcomes over time at the system level. ECE results are used to guide national and school-level policy and teaching decisions; they are not used to decide whether an individual student is promoted or graduates.

After school

Finishing secundaria completes Peru's compulsory education and opens the route into higher education (university or institutos/technical higher education) or directly into the workforce. Admission to Peruvian public and private universities is decided by each university through its own admission process, which commonly includes an entrance exam the university designs and runs itself — Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos's admission exam is one well-known example. The subjects, format, modalities and scoring of exams like this vary by university and are covered in their own separate programme files rather than repeated here.

Preparation tips

• Treat classroom, continuous assessment as what actually decides grade promotion in inicial, primaria and secundaria — there is no single end-of-year national exam to cram for at these stages.

• Check how the CNEB's transversal approaches and added competencies (English, ICT, educación para el trabajo) show up in the specific school's programme, since schools can vary in emphasis within the same national framework.

• If the student is heading toward university, look up the admission exam used by the specific universities of interest well before the final year of secundaria, since each university runs its own process with its own subjects, format and required scores.

• Use ECE results, where published for a school, as a general signal of how that school's students are performing against national standards, not as a measure of any one student.