Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including

Addison–Wesley Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles throu ...

Peachpit Peachpit is a publisher of books focused on graphic design, web design, and development. Peachpit's parent company is Pearson Education, which owns additional educational media brands including Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, and New Riders. F ...

, Prentice Hall,

eCollege Pearson eCollege is an on-demand, or software as a service (SaaS), provider of eLearning software and services to secondary and post-secondary learning institutions and is owned by Pearson PLC Pearson plc is a British multinational publis ...

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman brand is also ...

Scott Foresman Scott Foresman was an elementary educational publisher for PreK through Grade 6 in all subject areas. Its titles are now owned by Savvas Learning Company which formed from former Pearson Education K12 division. The old Glenview headquarters o ...

, and others. Pearson is part of Pearson plc, which formerly owned the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

''. It claims to have been formed in 1840, with the current incarnation of the company created when Pearson plc purchased the education division of

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest pu ...

(including Prentice Hall and

Allyn & Bacon Allyn & Bacon, founded in 1868, is a higher education textbook publisher in the areas of education, humanities and social sciences. It is an imprint of Pearson Education, the world's largest education publishing and technology company which is par ...

) from Viacom and merged it with its own education division, Addison-Wesley

, to form Pearson Education. Pearson Education was rebranded to Pearson in 2011 and split into an International and a North American division. Although Pearson generates approximately 60 percent of its sales in North America, it operates in more than 70 countries. Pearson International is headquartered in London, and maintains offices across Europe, Asia and South America. Its online chat support is based in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Pearson North America is headquartered at

330 Hudson 330 Hudson is a building located at 330 Hudson Street, in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Plans for developing the building began in 2011 when landlord Trinity Real Estate signed a 99-year lease agreement with Beac ...

in New York City, New York. It previously was located in

Upper Saddle River, New Jersey Upper Saddle River is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 8,208,Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

) and Bruno Mondadori (based in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Imprints

Pearson has a number of publishing imprints:

Logo

Pearson's logo is the unconventional symbol known as the

interrobang The interrobang (), also known as the interabang (often represented by any of ?!, !?, ?!? or !?!), is an unconventional punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark, or interro ...

(‽), a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, meant to convey "the excitement and fun of learning."

Partnerships

Pearson has partnered with five other higher-education publishers to create

CourseSmart CourseSmart, a privately held company headquartered in San Mateo, California founded in 2007, was a provider of Etextbook, eTextbooks and digital course materials. It was acquired by Ingram Content Group subsidiary VitalSource Technologies in earl ...

, a company developed to sell college textbooks in eTextbook format on a common platform. In 2010, Pearson agreed to a 5-year, $32 million, contract with the

New York State Department of Education The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is the department of the New York state government responsible for the supervision for all public schools in New York and all standardized testing, as well as the production and administration ...

to design tests for students in grades 4–8. GreyCampus partnered with Pearson for higher-education teaching-learning solutions under the Learningware brand. Que Publishing, a publishing imprint of Pearson-based out of Seattle, partnered with AARP to develop and add to a series of technology books for seniors. The series, which includes ''My iPad For Seniors,'' and ''My Social Media for Seniors,'' are large-print and colourful.

Errors in tests

In the spring of 2012, tests that Pearson designed for the

NYSED The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is the department of the New York state government responsible for the supervision for all public schools in New York and all standardized testing, as well as the production and administration ...

were found to contain over 30 errors, which caused controversy. One of the most prominent featured a passage about a talking pineapple on the 8th Grade ELA test (revealed to be based on

Daniel Pinkwater Daniel Manus Pinkwater (born November 15, 1941) is an American author of children's books and young adult fiction. His books include ''Lizard Music'', ''The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death'', ''Fat Men from Space'', ''Borgel'', and the pi ...

's ''The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant'', with the eggplant changed into a pineapple). After public outcry, the NYSED announced it would not count the questions in scoring. Other errors included a miscalculated question on the 8th Grade Mathematics test regarding

astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits ...

s, a 4th grade math question with two correct answers, errors in the 6th grade ELA scoring guide, and over twenty errors on foreign-language math tests. In May 2015, British comedian

John Oliver John William Oliver (born 23 April 1977) is a British-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. Oliver started his career as a stand-up comedian in the United Kingdom. He came to wider attention ...

analysed problems with Pearson's standardized tests and the company's greater lack of accountability on his HBO series '' Last Week Tonight''.

Technology products

Pearson's products include

MyMathLab ''MyMathLab'' is an online interactive and educational system designed by Pearson Education to accompany its published math textbooks. It covers courses from basic math through calculus and statistics, as well as math for business, engineering a ...

and Mastering Platform.

PowerSchool

In 2006, Pearson acquired PowerSchool, a student information system, from Apple. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. PowerSchool was a profitable product for Pearson. In 2014, it generated $97 million in revenue and $20 million in operating income. In 2015, Pearson sold PowerSchool to Vista Equity Partners for $350 million cash.

Poptropica

In 2007 the company developed the youth-oriented

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...

quest game ''

Poptropica ''Poptropica'' is an online role-playing game, developed in 2007 by Pearson Education's Family Education Network, and targeted towards children aged 6 to 15. ''Poptropica'' was primarily the creation of Jeff Kinney, the author of the ''Diary of ...

'', through its Family Education Network. In 2015 Pearson's Family Education Network, along with Poptropica, were sold to the London-based investment group Sandbox Partners.

Cogmed

Pearson owns

Cogmed Cogmed is a cognitive training software program created in the lab of Torkel Klingberg, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Klingberg was using it to present working memory challenges to people while he studied their brains using f ...

, a brain fitness and working memory training program founded in 1999 by Swedish researcher Torkel Klingberg.

StatCrunch

In 2016 Pearson acquired StatCrunch, a statistical analysis tool created by Webster West in 1997. Pearson had already been the primary distributor of StatCrunch for several years.

InformIT

InformIT, a subsidiary of Pearson Education, is an online book vendor and an

electronic publisher Electronic publishing (also referred to as publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editin ...

of technology and education content. InformIT.com is one of the web sites of the Pearson Technology Group, and one of several sites in the ''InformIT Network''. The site features free articles, blogs, and podcasts on IT topics and products, as well as a bookstore carrying all titles from these imprints. Publishing imprints represented on InformIT.com include

Addison-Wesley Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles throu ...

Professional,

Cisco Press Cisco Press is a publishing alliance between Cisco Systems and Pearson, the world's largest education publishing and technology company which is part of Pearson PLC, the global publisher and co-owner (47%) of Penguin Group and formerly Financia ...

,Safari Tech Books Online Named Exclusive Online Provider of Cisco Press Books
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IBM Press IBM Press is IBM's official retail book publisher for professionals and academia. A collaboration between IBM and Pearson Education, books are distributed in print and on Safari Books Online. Published topics range from general information tech ...

, Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference,

Que Publishing Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege ...

, and

Sams Publishing Sams Publishing is dedicated to the publishing of technical training manuals and is an imprint of Pearson plc, the global publishing and education company. Sams Publishing was founded in 1946 by Howard W. Sams, originally producing radio schem ...

. The other sites in the InformIT Network include: * Peachpit.com:

is a publisher that has been publishing books on graphic design, desktop publishing, multimedia, Web design and development, digital video, and general computing since 1986. Peachpit is a publishing partner for Adobe Press, lynda.com, NAPP, Apple Certified, AIGA Design Press and others. * FTPress.com: The book publishing imprint related to the

newspaper, FT Press creates books in the areas of general business, finance and investing, sales and marketing, leadership, management and strategy, human resources, and global business. FT Press is the publishing partner for

Wharton School Publishing Wharton School Publishing was a publishing house, a division of The Wharton School and Pearson, the world's largest education publishing and technology company. The imprint brought together a variety of business educators and corporate executive ...

Safari Books Online joint venture

In 2001, the Pearson Technology Group and O'Reilly Media LLC formed a joint partnership called

Safari Books Online A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an import ...

, to offer a web-based electronic library of technical and business books from InformIT's imprint partners and O'Reilly Media. The InformIT Network offers access to this service via its web sites. Pearson sold its interest in Safari Books Online to O'Reilly in 2014.

Realidades

Realidades is a standards-based high school curriculum that balances communications and grammar. With books for both middle school and high school students, Realidades features insight on the Spanish language, culture and technology.

Digital textbooks

In July 2019 Pearson announced it would begin the process of phasing out the publishing of printed textbooks, in a plan to move into a more

digital first Digital first is a communication theory that publishers should release content into new media channels in preference to old media. The premise behind the theory is that after the advent of Internet, most established media organizations continued to ...

strategy. The company reportedly envisions students relying more on e-textbooks which would be updated frequently, while printed books will be updated less often. Students wanting printed books will need to rent them.

Current business model

As of 2019, the firm gets half of their annual revenues from digital sales. The United States accounts for 20 percent of Pearson's annual revenue coming from courseware.

References

{{authority control * Educational publishing companies Educational publishing companies of the United Kingdom Publishing companies of the United Kingdom Book publishing companies based in London Computer book publishing companies Educational book publishing companies Textbook publishing companies Education companies established in 1998 British companies established in 1998 Publishing companies established in 1998 1998 establishments in England