Skip Links

Pearson Education: Around the business

Beginnings

The imprints that make up Pearson Education embody a rich educational and literary heritage. They stretch back to 1725 when Thomas Longman published the first book typeset by Benjamin Franklin. Scott Foresman, dating back to 1889, taught generations of Americans to read with the first Dick, Jane, and Spot stories.

US School

We are the leading pre K-12 curriculum, testing, and software company in the US, reaching every student and teacher in that country with one or more of our products and services. We offer a wide range of solutions that integrate our instructional, assessment, and reporting capabilities. These instructional offerings include basal and supplemental programmes, and technology-delivered adaptive learning solutions.

Click here to visit our Glossary of terms

Our early learning offerings include integrated and scientifically based learning and assessment tools from Pearson Early Learning, Pearson Digital Learning, and Family Education Network. Our premier elementary (Pearson Scott Foresman) and secondary (Pearson Prentice Hall) imprints publish the leading school programmes, including reading, literature, math, science and social studies. We also publish supplementary instructional materials and alternative text programmes for both elementary and secondary schools through our Pearson Learning Group.

We provide industry-leading, digital instructional solutions for preK-12 (Pearson Digital Learning), as well as student information, assessment, reporting and business solutions (Pearson School Systems). In fact, nearly 50% of US schools use at least one of our student curriculum, instructional management and financial software packages. Additionally, we are the largest comprehensive provider of educational assessment services and solutions in the US (Pearson Educational Measurement), developing, scoring and processing tens of millions of student tests every year. We lead in automated written answer scoring (Pearson Knowledge Technologies), and providing scanning and OMR software and hardware solutions, and psychological assessments for education, commercial and other markets (Pearson Assessments).

Our path to meeting classroom goals is informed by five research-based criteria along the Teach & Learn Cycle, which is the foundation of how we view the mission of education, and the elements of which are firmly embedded in all of our products and programmes. With an unwavering focus, we help educators teach, assess, report, diagnose, and prescribe solutions to improve student achievement.

Pearson Achievement Solutions

In 2005, Pearson Achievement Solutions (www.pearsonachievementsolutions.com) was formed from Lessonlab and Co-nect. A dynamic company focused on providing customised solutions for school improvement, the new venture includes comprehensive professional development for teachers, aligned with research, assessment and instructional programmes for both schools and school districts.

Lessonlab has more than three decades of professional development experience, and provides an unparalleled collection of K-12 teacher educational programmes, including district professional development, distance and site-based graduate courses, and master's degree programmes. Co-nect is the leading provider of data-driven professional development solutions that help schools and districts manage and measure effective instructional improvement. The company's content, collaborative tools, technologies, and data-analysis are delivered through a nationwide network of certified consultants. The company has delivered results to over 500 schools in 145 districts in 33 states.

US Higher Education

We are the leading college publisher in the world, providing higher education textbooks, learning tools, and technologies. Every US college student learns from one or more of our programmes, and about three million college students are currently pursuing their studies online using Pearson Higher Education's products.

Imprints, all innovators in online learning and support, include Pearson Prentice Hall, the market leader in higher education publishing across all discipline areas; Pearson Addison Wesley and Pearson Benjamin Cummings, the premier publishers in computing, economics, finance, mathematics, science, and statistics; Pearson Longman, the highly-regarded publisher of quality materials in English, history, philosophy, political science, and religion; and Pearson Allyn & Bacon, at the forefront of the social sciences, humanities, and education disciplines.

Our PearsonChoices programmes offer faculty and students a variety of price points and formats, including low-cost print and digital editions; text/web combinations; customized editions built around an instructor's specific course; and traditional textbooks. SafariX eTextbooks Online is an integral part of PearsonChoices, and includes hundreds of eTextbooks at 50 percent off the suggested list price of print equivalent editions.

Through a partnership with Audible, Inc., we are creating innovative audio learning products for the higher education market, including digital audio study guides for playback on Apple® iPods®, PDAs, and other AudibleReady® devices.

Pearson Custom Publishing enhances the value of our content by offering educators the opportunity to fully customize their instructional programmes. We can help them author their own educational programmes; build a textbook from our library of copyrighted content, reorganize existing texts; or all of the above.

Our Tutor Center (www.aw.com/tutorcenter; www.prenhall.com/tutorcenter) is a unique resource in the publishing industry, an in-house academic support service for college students that provides personal access to college instructors who help explain concepts and solutions to problems in Pearson's Higher Education textbooks. More than 35,000 college students have taken advantage of this service since its creation.

e-tips for A grades is a free website created by students for students to help take some of the stress out of the college experience. In-depth site topics are based on the Students Helping Students series of books published by Prentice Hall Press, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA). These titles are all written and edited by top students and recent graduates from colleges and universities throughout the U.S. e-tips is part of Pearson Higher Education's "First Days of Class" programmes, created to help students succeed in their college course work.

Testing the world's children

We mark school examinations for the US federal government, 20 American states, and thousands of UK schools. We are America's leading test scoring and reporting company, scoring more than 100 million multiple-choice tests and 30 million essays every year, as well as The National Assessment of Educational Progress (the only federal nationwide test); and college entrance exams.

Assessing the situation

We launched the first formative assessment products designed to measure progress and forecast student growth toward US state performance standards. the PASeries product line includes PASeries Reading, PASeries Writing, PASeries Mathematics, and PASeries Algebra I.

AGS Publishing, now part of Pearson Education, publishes assessments and curriculum materials for US school psychologists, teachers, and students, with a particular focus on supporting students who are at risk or performing below grade level, including those whose first language is not English.

Professional

Our professional and technology group publishes leading computer, information technology, and business titles, with imprints such as Addison-Wesley Professional; Financial Times-Prentice Hall; New Riders, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall, Que and Sams, and Cisco Press, complemented by InformIt.com, our online IT Web destination. In training, FT Knowledge partners with leading companies to deliver learning that equips people to implement company strategy and solve business problems.

We joined forces with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to create Wharton School Publishing (WSP), providing practical knowledge that can be applied by business leaders to make real change in their professional lives. WSP's The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, by C.K. Prahalad, was voted the top business book by the editors of Amazon.com.

We publish technology and business books under the IBM PressTM imprint, in English and other languages, and in both print and electronic formats. The arrangement aims to make IBM Press the world's leading imprint for technology knowledge.

Pearson VUE

Pearson VUE provides computer-based testing services. In the UK, Pearson VUE develops and manages the UK driving theory test, testing 1.6 million people each year in over 150 Pearson-owned test centres. It also manages the national admission test for law (LNAT www.lnat.ac.uk), which helps UK universities to choose candidates for their undergraduate law programmes, and provides computer-based test delivery for Instutute of Financial Services (IFS) qualifications.

In the US, Pearson VUE provides professional certification and IT licensure exams for a variety of customers, including the NCLEX exam for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the GMAT for the Graduate Management Admissions Council, and the National Association of Securities Dealers. In February 2006, Pearson VUE acquired Promissor, a leading provider of licensing examinations for state and federal regulatory bodies in the US. It has a wide range of contracts to assess and certify professionals in the real estate, insurance, mortgage lending, contracting, employment and healthcare industries.

Government solutions

Pearson Government Solutions (PGS) serves the federal government and post-secondary education markets. It delivers technology-based solutions that support public sector entities in their delivery of information, benefits, and services to their constituents. PGS works with such organizations as the US Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, Veterans Affairs and Labor, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the Transportation Security Administration, and other civilian agencies.

International growth

Pearson Education is already the world leader in educational publishing, and our unrivalled strength in the US market is increasingly being replicated on an international scale. Our international business is now three times the size of its closest competitor, and well placed to benefit from global trends such as the growing number of full-time education enrolments, increased use of technology and the growth of English as the language of international commerce and communication.

The international breadth and reach of Pearson Education is a huge advantage, providing unrivalled scale, leadership and global capability to fulfil international educational needs. These factors, together with the ability to customise and adapt our content to meet local educational demands, enable us to maximise our market share on a global basis. This growth extends to every area of our publishing and testing products and services - including school, higher education, English language teaching and professional.

The combination of global capability and local presence ensure that we have the potential to continue growing our education business internationally, whilst the credibility of brands such as Longman and Scott Foresman ensure that Pearson Education is seen as the pre-eminent education brand throughout the world.

Edexcel, which became wholly owned by Pearson in 2005, is the UK's largest awarding body. It offers academic and vocational qualifications and testing to more than 25,000 schools, colleges, employers and other places of learning in the UK and across more than 100 countries worldwide. Edexcel marks and delivers 9.4 million examination scripts each year, with over 3 million marked on-screen in 2005, leading the modernisation of the examination system in the UK.

Other recent examples of Pearson Education's international growth include: our involvement in the roll-out of universal primary education across Ghana, the contract to test 250,000 students in 96 countries with the GMAT examination, the fact that 9 million students use our materials in Latin America and that four out of five English language students in Hong Kong use our products.