Education
Under the 1993 constitution, primary education is free and compulsory. The system is highly centralized, with the Ministry of Education appointing all public school teachers. Eighty-three percent of Peru's students attend public schools at all levels, but over 15 percent (usually the upper-classes) attend private schools if their parents can afford to pay for the tuition.
School enrollment has been rising sharply for years, due to a widening educational effort by the government and a growing school-age population. The illiteracy (2008) rate is estimated at 7.1% (10.6% for women), 19.0% in rural areas and 3.7% in urban areas . Quechua is mostly an oral language, so in some cases, in rural areas, people do not speak Spanish and therefore do not know how to read or write. Elementary and secondary school enrollment is about 7.7 million. Peru's 74 universities (1999), 39% public and 61% private institutions, enrolled about 322,000 students in 1999.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Peru
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made—a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.—with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?—Not at all: it absolutely stops short.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)