This working paper discusses views and experiences of discipline and punishment in everyday schooling among a group of boys and girls aged between 14 and 16 years old, who are attending a public high school in an urban Andean city in Peru. It draws on data collected using a range of a qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with students, their parents, teachers and headteacher; group discussions with students; and class-, school- and home-based observations.

The past few decades have witnessed international pressure to get more children in the world educated, for longer. The view that school education is core to definitions of good childhoods and successful youth transitions is increasingly widespread, globally and locally.  However, structural inequalities persist and migration for education has become an important individual, family and community response to overcome these gaps.

This paper examines how poverty is involved in a multitude of risks in children's lives using data gathered from children in Peru between 2002 and 2006. Three main arguments emerge. The first is that risk is not simply a feature of "extraordinary" childhood circumstances. Rather, it is part of everyday life for many children. For example, urban families in the sample experienced slightly more "interpersonal" shocks, with crime and family problems relatively more prevalent in cities than rural areas.

This project explores why children from historically disadvantaged groups in the country experience higher rates of dropout (and less potential for social mobility) and attempt to uncover the decision-making processes and factors affecting these rates. Though education has been cited by many scholars as the primary source of equalization in a capitalist society, the Peruvian case underlines the imperative of discussing how —power and inequality mediate people's access to educational freedoms—(Jeffrey et. al., 2008: 31).