Improvement of educational performance indicators in Peru through mathematical optimization

Abstract

In recent years, the Peruvian Ministry of Education has been conducting census evaluations aimed at fourth-grade elementary and second-grade high school students, in the subjects of mathematics, reading comprehension, social sciences and science and technology, whose results are qualified as Before beginning, Beginning, In process or Satisfactory. According to the latest census (ECE 2018) applied to high school students, it is observed that, although the area of mathematics has the second highest percentage qualified as Satisfactory (14.1%), it has the disadvantage of registering 36.4% as Beginning and 33.7% as Before beginning, which represents one of the biggest obstacles to achieve optimal academic performances across all subjects evaluated. For these reasons, this research aims at improving and consolidating mathematical knowledge in high school students through the strategic distribution of tutoring centers, within the Lima Metropolitan Area. To achieve this, the ECE 2018 database was analyzed to cluster the results according to the districts constituting each of the five areas of Lima; subsequently, those areas in which centers are primarily required were identified; and finally, through mathematical optimization, the optimal number of centers required and their locations to maximize the coverage were determined.