Guiding question:

Exploring Literacy and Education in Peru

I was able to spend time in Peru with the Fulbright program as part of Teachers for Global Classrooms, an international exchange that connects U.S. educators with schools around the world. For a few weeks, I was able to visit schools across the country to better understand Peru’s approach to education—particularly its impressively high literacy rate.

According to the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru’s literacy rate now exceeds 99%. I came here to learn what’s behind that statistic: What strategies are schools using? What role does community play? How are teachers supported? Where did this statistic come from?

While Peru reports impressively high literacy rates, a closer look reveals that these numbers may not reflect the full student population. The country is undergoing a nationwide shift toward the science of reading, with an emphasis on decoding and fluency over comprehensions, a focus that align’s with the country’s strong oral tradition, yet instruction remain largely whole group with only emerging attention to differentiation.