Across many industries, a strong sense of fundamental purpose is a characteristic shared by many leading businesses. Pearson’s purpose is to help people make progress in their lives through learning. This purpose informs and shapes our company strategy and is the starting point of our responsibility framework:
Pearson’s purpose
Our purpose is to help people make progress in their lives through learning.
Our focus
In 2010, we defined three key issues as the focus of Pearson’s corporate responsibility strategy: literacy, learning outcomes and contributing to competitiveness. These three key issues are where Pearson can make a unique contribution to people’s social and economic wellbeing on a global scale.
Responsible business practice
Beyond these three issues, we have a wider agenda of responsible business practice. This covers areas such as nurturing and developing talent and diversity, environmental responsibility and supporting the work of the Pearson Foundation.
Our values
Our approach to ethics and how we behave is grounded by our culture and values – to be brave, imaginative and decent.
We continue to be recognised in external benchmarks as a leader in corporate responsibility – a testament to the commitment and efforts of our people. We were (for a fourth year) ranked gold in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
2013 is a year of considerable change as we merge Penguin with Random House and develop our global education strategy.
Our commitment to helping people make progress in their lives through learning is enduring. However, against that wider backdrop of change, we will ask some key questions about our responsibility framework this year:
- What are the big unmet educational needs which we can help tackle?
- How should we measure and report the educational impact of our products and services?
- Are the three key issues still the right ones for us to focus on?
- What commitments and targets should we set ourselves?
If you have thoughts on these four questions or would like to play a part in helping us find the answers, please let us know and contact our head of corporate responsibility at peter.hughes@pearson.com
Robin Freestone Chief financial officer
(and board member responsible for corporate responsibility)