Peru

Peru's 1993 constitution devotes several articles to the topic of education. In article 13, education is presented as a core factor in personal development to be protected by the state and encouraged by the family. The specific provisions that follow this affirmation provide for academic freedom; academic professionalism; limited local control of education; compulsory preprimary, primary, and secondary education; university freedom and autonomy; and assorted other educational rights. The education articles of the constitution also establish the authority of the national government, specifically the Ministry of Education, over curricular and administrative matters of education nationwide. While the constitution includes important provisions for higher education, most of these rights were stated earlier and more completely in the 1982 General Law of Education Year. This law was followed in 1983 by the University Law, which further established the rights of the institutions, academics, and higher education students. The 1995 higher education law, provides for the establishment of the Consejo Nacional para la Autorización de Funcionamiento de Universidades (CONAFU), which serves as a coordinating council for the nation's growing number of higher education institutions.

The 1997 reform documents the dramatic change in educational philosophy that Peru has planned for the years 1997 through 2007 when it suggests that the existing concepts of education were designed to function in a learning environment diametrically opposed to that actually in existence. The old educational philosophy is typified as the acquisition of a list of concepts and acts while that which the Ministry of Education seeks to create is presented by way of four areas: learn to be, learn to coexist, learn to become, and learn to learn.