Equitable STEM Participation Among Girls and Boys in Peru’s Secondary Education System

By Paola Moreno-Roman, PhD

(Prototype GEM/PEER‑style country profile)

Context

Peru’s basic education system includes five years of educación secundaria, which broadly correspond to lower and upper secondary levels and cover the ages at which adolescents begin to make concrete decisions about further study, technical pathways, and work (1,2). Government expenditure on education increased from 3.3 percent of GDP in 2013 to 4.4 percent in 2024, and the share of total public expenditure devoted to education rose from 15.2 percent to 19.2 percent in the same period, indicating a sustained commitment to the sector (1). Over this decade, upper secondary completion has expanded, and the gender gap in completion has generally remained small, although it fluctuates from year to year and does not disappear entirely (1).

Global monitoring on gender and education stresses that girls’ trajectories into STEM begin well before higher education, and that building strong skills and confidence in mathematics during primary and lower secondary is essential if more young women are to enter and remain in STEM fields in a digital economy (3,4). At the same time, evidence from the World Inequality Database on Education and national and regional sources shows that in Peru, secondary completion and learning outcomes still vary significantly by wealth, location, and other markers of inequality, which shapes who can realistically access and thrive in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics pathways (5–7).

Legal and policy framework

The Constitución Política del Perú establishes education as a fundamental right and commits the State to ensuring equal opportunities without discrimination (2). The Ley General de Educación defines principles of quality, fairness, and inclusion in the education system and mandates the State to prioritize populations in situations of vulnerability, including those in rural, Indigenous, and low income communities (2). Recent policy documents, such as national education projects and strategic plans, emphasize improving learning outcomes and reducing gaps in access and completion, particularly at the secondary level, where transition to higher education and technical training begins (2,7).

Policies related to science, technology, and innovation underline the importance of strengthening scientific and technological capacities in the population and call for educational actions that foster curiosity, critical thinking, and problem solving in science and mathematics from early ages (2,7). Gender policy frameworks and gender equality plans recognize the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields and highlight the need to address barriers that girls and young women face along their educational trajectories, including stereotypes, lack of information about STEM careers, and differential expectations in families and communities (8,9). Although not all of these documents focus explicitly on secondary STEM, together they create a policy environment in which fair participation of girls and boys in STEM learning is an acknowledged priority (2,8,9).

Policies and programmes to support STEM participation

Curriculum reforms implemented in recent years have positioned mathematics and science as core areas of aprendizaje fundamental in basic education, with an emphasis on competencies such as scientific inquiry, interpretation of data, and application of mathematical reasoning to real problems (2,7). The curriculum for educación secundaria requires students to engage with increasingly complex content in mathematics and science and encourages the use of experiments, projects, and technology to make learning more meaningful (2). These expectations create an opportunity to strengthen STEM skills for all students, provided that schools have the conditions, materials, and support to implement them (2,7).

In practice, a range of initiatives seeks to expand adolescents’ opportunities to engage with STEM, sometimes with a focus on those who have historically had fewer chances to do so (10,14). Ministries, universities, and civil society organizations have organized science fairs, robotics and coding workshops, and STEM clubs that aim to awaken interest in science and technology among secondary students (10,14). Some of these activities explicitly seek to reach rural schools in the Andes and Amazon or to engage girls who may not see themselves represented in science and technology spaces (10,14). There are also efforts to bring women scientists and engineers into classrooms and extracurricular programmes as role models, in some cases with facilitators who share students’ languages and cultural backgrounds, to make STEM careers more visible and attainable (9,11,14,15).

Teachers, learning environments, and school conditions

Infrastructure and school conditions influence how far curriculum aspirations for STEM can be realized. UIS indicators show that by 2016, around 89 percent of lower secondary schools and 89 percent of upper secondary schools in Peru had access to electricity, and approximately 85 to 86 percent had computers for pedagogical purposes (1). Internet connectivity for pedagogical use was lower, with about 71 percent of lower secondary schools having internet in 2016 and roughly 75 percent by 2023, which shows progress but not universal access (1). The proportion of lower and upper secondary schools with adapted infrastructure and materials for students with disabilities increased from around 28 to 33 percent in 2016 to over 92 percent by 2023, indicating significant improvements in physical accessibility (1).

Despite these advances, school level data and independent research point to persistent differences in conditions between urban and rural schools. Rural secondary schools are more likely to face unstable connectivity, limited equipment, and multi grade or multi subject teaching conditions, which can constrain opportunities for sustained, hands on STEM learning (7,12). Teacher policy frameworks establish requirements for qualifications and promote ongoing professional development, but there is limited publicly available information on systematic programmes that prepare teachers to address stereotypes about who belongs in STEM, to foster interest among students who may doubt their abilities, or to adapt STEM teaching to multilingual and intercultural classrooms (3,7,8).

Monitoring and data

Peru participates in regional and national assessments that provide information on learning outcomes in mathematics and reading, and sometimes science, disaggregated by sex and other characteristics, although the degree of disaggregation available in public reporting varies (4,7). The SDG 4 country profile produced by UIS provides time series on upper secondary completion and an indicator of the gender gap in completion, which in Peru ranges between approximately 0 and 2.2 percentage points over 2013 to 2024 rather than following a simple downward trend (1). Data from the World Inequality Database on Education, based on household surveys, show that adolescents from the poorest quintiles are far less likely to complete lower and upper secondary than those from the richest quintiles and that within these groups, patterns for girls and boys are not identical (5,6).

Administrative data from ESCALE offer detailed enrollment information by school, grade, and sex, which can be used to describe patterns of participation in secondary education across regions and school types (13). However, at present, public data systems do not systematically report sex disaggregated enrollment and completion in specific STEM related tracks or technical specialties at the secondary level, which limits the ability to monitor how many girls and boys progress into STEM intensive pathways before higher education (4,7).

References

1. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. SDG 4 country profile: Peru. Montreal: UIS; 2025. Available from: https://download.uis.unesco.org/SDG4/SDG4-Profile-Peru.pdf

2. OECD. Education and skills in Peru. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2026. Available from: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-and-skills-in-peru_7d430d1b-en

3. UNESCO. Global education monitoring report 2024 gender report. Paris: UNESCO; 2025. Available from: https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/publication/2024-gender-report

4. UNESCO. Monitoring SDG 4: Global education monitoring report online. Paris: UNESCO; 2024. Available from: https://www.unesco.org/reports/gem-report/en/2024-monitoringsdg4

5. World Inequality Database on Education. Country profile: Peru. Montreal: WIDE/UNESCO; 2023. Available from: https://www.education-inequalities.org/countries/peru

6. World Inequality Database on Education. WIDE data download (Peru, wide_2023_sept). Montreal: WIDE/UNESCO; 2023. Available from: https://www.education-inequalities.org/data

7. OECD. Education at a glance 2025: OECD indicators, country note Peru. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2025. Available from: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/education-at-a-glance-2025_1a3543e2-en/peru_0afa65c8-en.html

8. World Bank. Peru gender scorecard. Washington (DC): World Bank; 2022. Available from: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099911202202530996/pdf/IDU17dfce1091b1a21446918e331463c6f87b3fa.pdf

9. Vergara C, et al. Access and opportunities for Peruvian women in STEM fields in the 21st century. Learning-Gate J. 2025. Available from: https://learning-gate.com/index.php/2576-8484/article/download/4614/1760

10. Arana F, et al. Playful tools to foster the development of computational thinking in rural Peru. Manag Prod Eng Rev. 2025. Available from: https://www.iieta.org/journals/mmep/paper/10.18280/mmep.120514

11. Learning-Gate. Women in STEM in Peru: higher education and labour market snapshots. Learning-Gate J. 2025. Available from: https://learning-gate.com

12. Del Carpio L, et al. Urban rural gap in education performance in Peruvian public schools. Front Educ. 2024. Available from: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1394938/full

13. Ministerio de Educación del Perú. Diccionario de datos del Censo Escolar 2025. Lima: MINEDU ESCALE; 2025. Available from: https://escale.minedu.gob.pe

14. Yachaq Warmi. Yachaq Warmi: comunidad de latinas en STEM. Lima; 2025. Available from: https://www.yachaqwarmi.org

15. Yachaq Warmi. ¿Qué hay detrás de lo amarillo? Lima; 2025. Available from: https://www.yachaqwarmi.org/post/qu%C3%A9-hay-detr%C3%A1s-de-lo-amarillo