Founded in 1884, Pearson engages in education, business information, and consumer publishing businesses worldwide. The company operates in three groups: Pearson Education, Financial Times, and Penguin. The Pearson Education group provides educational materials, technologies, assessments, and related services to teachers and students. It also provides electronic learning programs, test development, and processing and scoring services to educational institutions, corporations, and professional bodies. Headquartered in UK, Pearson operates in more than 60 countries. The company has more than 36,000 employees.

Pearson’s professional education business publishes leading computer, information technology, and business titles for business and tests and certifies professionals. Its publishing imprints include Addison-Wesley Professional; Financial Times-Prentice Hall; New Riders, Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall, Que and Sams, Wharton School Publishing and Cisco Press.

Pearson VUE is the electronic testing for regulatory and certification boards, providing a full suite of services from test development to test delivery and data management. Pearson VUE offers exams through the world's largest network of test centres in 163 countries, delivering the NCLEX exam for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the GMAT for the Graduate Management Admissions Council, and numerous IT exams-such as Cisco, CompTIA and many other exams globally.

In the US, Pearson VUE delivers state and federal licensing examinations to professionals in the real estate, insurance, mortgage lending, contracting, employment and healthcare industries.