Can a private school in Peru hold your child's report card over unpaid fees?

What the school cannot make conditional on payment

Article 16.1 of Ley 26549 names four things, one by one:

“La institución educativa privada está prohibida de condicionar la atención de reclamos, la entrega de libreta de notas, la asistencia o evaluación del estudiante al pago de la pensión o cualquier otro pago.”

And the ban is not limited to the monthly fee. The text says “al pago de la pensión o cualquier otro pago” — any other payment at all: the cuota de ingreso, the cuota de matrícula, materials, late charges.

This holds even where the debt is real and large. The school can chase the money the way any creditor does. What it cannot do is use the child as security for it.

The one thing it may hold back

The same rule opens a single door, and opens it narrowly:

“La institución educativa privada únicamente puede retener los certificados de estudios correspondientes a los grados de estudios no pagados, siempre que hubiera informado de ello a los usuarios del servicio en el plazo establecido en el artículo 14 de la presente Ley.”

Three limits come out of that sentence:

1. Only certificados de estudios. Not the libreta de notas, which is a different document.
2. Only for the unpaid years. The certificates for years you did pay are untouchable.
3. Only if it told you first. The article 14 information goes out in writing, before enrolment. Without that notice, holding certificates is illegal too.

The libreta and the certificado are not the same document

This is the confusion most often used at the school office, sometimes in good faith. Two documents, two opposite rules.

If you are told “you owe money, so we cannot release the document”, the first question is which document. If it is the libreta, there is nothing to argue about: the statute names it.

Nor does it help to show you the marks on a screen, read them over the phone, or hand you a blank report card. What the law protects is the handover of the document itself.

“The new law changed this” — it did not

Ley 32562 was published in March 2026 and rewrote much of Ley 26549: articles 2, 3, 4, 14, 17 and 18, plus a new article 1-A. Since then it is common to be told at a school that “the rule changed”.

On this point it did not. Ley 32562 repealed Decreto de Urgencia 002-2020, which is where the current wording of article 16 comes from — but it carved that article out of the repeal:

“Se deroga el Decreto de Urgencia 002-2020 […] con excepción del artículo 16 y de la primera disposición complementaria transitoria, los cuales mantienen su vigencia y todos sus efectos.”

In other words, the 2026 legislator looked at article 16 and chose to keep it whole. The rule on report cards, exams and attendance is as much in force now as it was before.

Two points that keep you from citing this wrongly:

• The wording that governs today comes from Decreto de Urgencia 002-2020, not from Ley 27665. The 2002 version did not mention the libreta de notas or attendance at all; those two words were added in 2020. Anyone quoting the 2002 law is quoting a text that does not say what you need.
• Minedu’s own web page for Ley 26549 serves the 1995 text with no amendment notes. It is not the version in force of articles 14, 16, 17 or 18.

What they can charge, and what they owe you before you sign

Article 14, in its current version, sets two caps that read in a line:

“La cuota de matrícula no puede exceder el importe de una pensión mensual.”

“Las pensiones son una por cada mes de estudios del respectivo año lectivo o periodo promocional.”

An enrolment fee worth two or three monthly fees does not fit the law. Thirteen monthly fees across a ten-month school year does not either.

The same article requires the whole price picture to be delivered “de manera veraz, suficiente, apropiada y por escrito, al menos treinta días calendario antes del inicio del proceso de matrícula” — in writing, at least thirty calendar days before enrolment opens. That information includes five years of history for the pensión, the cuota de matrícula and the cuota de ingreso, so you can see whether this year’s increase is out of line, and whether the school will withhold certificates for non-payment, with an express reference to paragraph 16.1.

The practical consequence: keep that document. It is the proof of what you were told you would be charged, and it decides whether the school was allowed to withhold certificates at all.

Other charges article 16 blocks

• “Voluntary” contributions as a condition. Article 16.2 forbids making enrolment, registration or continued attendance conditional on contribuciones denominadas voluntarias. If it is a requirement, it is not voluntary.
• Disability-related charges. The same 16.2 forbids conditioning enrolment or continued attendance on payments for adaptability, accessibility or adjustments for students with special educational needs linked to a disability.
• Fees paid in advance. 16.2 forbids demanding one or more monthly fees up front, unless they replace the cuota de ingreso or the cuota de matrícula — and that is the family’s choice, not the school’s.
• Invented line items. 16.2 also blocks charging “sumas o recargos por conceptos diferentes a los establecidos en esta Ley”.
• Buying only at the school’s supplier. 16.3: the school may not require uniforms, materials or supplies to be bought “en establecimientos señalados con exclusividad por parte de ésta”.
• All supplies on day one. 16.4 forbids it and requires delivery to be staged, according to what students actually need to use.

What the law does not settle: next year’s enrolment

Be precise here, because this is where people are promised more than the text gives.

Article 16.1 protects the student during the year under way: marks, exams, attendance, complaints. Article 16.2 forbids conditioning enrolment or continued attendance on “voluntary” contributions and on disability-related charges.

What the text of article 16 does not say in those words is that a school must re-enrol, for the following year, a family that owes ordinary pensiones. Reading article 16 does not answer that question, and we will not claim here that the law forces re-enrolment.

What you can hold on the text:

• The current year finishes: marks, exams and classes are not conditional on payment.
• The report card is handed over regardless.
• If enrolment is refused over a “voluntary” contribution, that is expressly prohibited.
• If the school never gave you the written article 14 information on time, it cannot hold certificates to block your transfer to another school either.

How they are not allowed to chase the money

A school is a supplier and you are a consumer, so the collection rules of the Consumer Protection and Defence Code apply to it. Article 61 prohibits collection methods “que afecten la reputación del consumidor, que atenten contra la privacidad de su hogar, que afecten sus actividades laborales o su imagen ante terceros”.

Article 62 spells that out. Among the prohibited methods:

• Sending documents made to look like court notices or filings.
• Visiting or calling between 20.00 and 07.00, or on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
• Putting up notices in public view demanding payment.
• Contacting or calling third parties outside the obligation to tell them you are in arrears.
• Sending statements or collection notices to a third party’s address.

A list of debtors on the noticeboard at the gate, a message to the class parents’ group, a call to your employer — all of these land squarely in article 62. That goes to Indecopi, and it is a separate fact from the withheld report card. You can bring both.

The fines, and why the band is not the point

Ley 32562 raised the sanctions under Ley 26549. The bands in force are the ones in the table on this page: minor breaches 0.5 to 2 UIT, serious 2 to 20 UIT, very serious 20 to 80 UIT with suspension or closure, and 50 to 100 UIT for running a school without authorisation.

What the statute does not say is which band a given behaviour falls into. That classification sat in the schedule of breaches in DS 005-2021-MINEDU, and Ley 32562 itself left that regulation without effect. At the time of this review the replacement regulation was still a draft. So we give the bands and not the label: anyone telling you today that “withholding the report card is a serious breach, that’s X UIT” is quoting a number the rules in force do not set.

For you that changes little. What decides your case is not the band. It is that article 16.1 names the libreta de notas.