You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Pearson will report audited "learning outcomes" alongside its financial results by 2018 as part of a drive to measure and increase the company's impact around the world.
The company said the measures were intended to put "efficacy" at the centre of its strategy.
Alongside reporting learning outcomes with its financial results, Pearson said it will also “institutionalise” efficacy across its organisation by appointing a senior leader with a specific brief for improving efficacy in every area of its business.
The academic publisher has also committed to publishing an Efficacy Framework which will ensure its products and services enable students to learn what they need to make progress. Pearson will also develop a global research network to gather the evidence needed on the “path to efficacy”, and openly to share and broker debate around its findings.
A Pearson statement said: “The company’s ambition is to ensure that its work is driven by an ever-clearer understanding of how it can maximise and measure its impact on learning outcomes, drawing on the lessons of the healthcare industry to invest in research and development and build new partnerships that will address the most pressing unmet needs in education.”
John Fallon, Pearson’s chief executive, added: “Pearson’s purpose is to help people make progress in their lives through learning. So, we better be sure that we can demonstrate that progress, in all we do, in a meaningful way. Our aim is to ensure that every action, every decision, every process, and every investment we make will be driven by a clear sense and understanding of how it will make a measurable impact on learning outcomes. We need to institutionalise this process, and make it our natural habit.”
Michael Barber, Pearson’s chief education advisor, said that global education challenges were too steep for any one organisation to pursue independently. "We are sharing the progress we are making so that others can challenge and support us to move more rapidly. Collaboration, partnership, and co-creation are the only way to transform education at the pace the learners we serve require,” he said.