Serious concerns about the financial performance of Pearson PLC, the world’s biggest education publisher, prompted a trans-Atlantic alliance of pension funds to call on the company to urgently review its business strategy. The alliance, representing 193,000 Pearson voting shares, submitted a shareholder resolution, which was heard at the company’s annual general meeting in London in April 2016. The resolution asked the education conglomerate to look again at its future business plans and end its over-reliance on high-stakes testing in the United States, the market that produces 60 percent of its profits, and questioned Pearson’s support for low-fee private schools in the developing world.

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Pearson: The call for a new direction in their business strategy for education

On March 22, 2016, investors and education stakeholders met with Pearson shareholders at the Council of Institutional Investors’ Spring Conference in Washington, D.C. On the agenda was Pearson’s lackluster stock performance, souring public opinion, and the economic imperative for Pearson to reevaluate their approach to the business of education. View the presentations in several languages below.

          

Pearson: The whole truth

Pearson’s recent response to our Pearson Shareholders Resolution indicates just how significantly the company fails to grasp the gaping holes in its business strategy that inspired the resolution in the first place. By cherry-picking carefully selected facts and omitting pertinent data, we believe that Pearson fails to give its shareholders a complete and unfettered assessment of what’s gone wrong.

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