Early history Following the British government's acquisition and nationalization of several of
Pearson's aviation, fuel, and energy divisions in the early 1940s, the diversified multinational conglomerate entered the education market. It acquired the textbook publisher
Longman in 1968. In 1988, Pearson plc purchased
Addison-Wesley, the sixth-largest publisher of textbooks in the U.S., and merged it with Pearson's educational books subsidiary Longman to create Addison-Wesley Longman.
Marjorie Scardino, who was CEO of Pearson plc from 1997 to 2013, increasingly focused the company on education, emphasizing acquisitions in the sector. In 1998, Pearson plc purchased the education division of
Simon & Schuster, which included
Prentice Hall,
Allyn & Bacon, and parts of
Macmillan Inc. including the Macmillan name. Later in 1998, Pearson merged with Simon & Schuster's educational business with Addison Wesley Longman to form
Pearson Education. Pearson Education sold and divested most of its Simon & Schuster divisions in 1999. It sold
Silver Burdett Ginn Religion, a Catholic publishing division it operated under the
Scott Foresman imprint, to
RCL Benziger in 2007. In 2007, Pearson Education sold the Macmillan name to
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, In 2000, Pearson acquired Virtual University Enterprises, an electronic testing company founded in 1994, and renamed it Pearson VUE. According to the company, as of 2023, it delivers numerous skills tests and certification tests electronically in over 180 countries.
Pearson formation and rebranding Pearson Education was rebranded as simply
Pearson in 2011, and split into Pearson North America and Pearson International. A restructuring announced in 2013 combined Pearson North America and Pearson International into one Pearson company organised around three global lines of business: School, Higher Education, and Professional. Following the sale of its financial news publications
Financial Times and
The Economist in 2015, Pearson plc rebranded in January 2016 to focus solely on education, and the corporation adopted a new logo. The logo features the
interrobang (‽), a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, to convey a "combination of excitement, curiosity and individuality" In late 2025, Pearson VUE announced it would rebrand as simply
Pearson, with its assessment segment identified as
Pearson Professional Assessments.
Digital transformation In 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 strategy.
E-textbooks will be updated frequently, while printed books will be updated less often. which rebranded it as Savvas Learning Company. In 2019, Pearson also sold its remaining 25% stake in
Penguin Random House to
Bertelsmann. In 2022, Pearson Education announced that they intended to sell their digital textbooks as
NFTs, in order to profit from secondhand sales. In 2022, Pearson acquired ClutchPrep, a Miami-based edtech startup that offers sample questions, test prep and college exam prep video guides. The service has been renamed Channels. ==Imprints==