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Progress
- Progress and plans

Progress and plans

Product quality and impact

Target 2009		Progress		Plan 2010
Continue and expand the Pearson Foundation/Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Educational Summit to include a focus on teacher quality and training, one of the key learnings of the Singapore convening.		Achieved. In September 2009, CCSSO and the Pearson Foundation welcomed more than 40 international education leaders to the second annual Pearson Foundation/CCSSO International Conference on Education in Helsinki, Finland. The aim was for the international delegation to learn from Finland’s own success in preparing its K-12 and university educators to meet the demands of an increasingly inter-connected and technologically advanced workforce.		Continue the summit at an event in London in 2010 to include a focus on ICT in education, a key concern for educators in the classroom and for administrators hoping to improve academic systems, assessments and reporting.
Extend the Pearson Professional Development Program for African educators to involve education leaders in a cross-country dialogue addressing key education needs and solutions.		Achieved. This programme has now run for the second year, spearheaded by the Pearson Foundation and Pearson Southern Africa teams. The 2009 programme included training teachers in Literacy and Numeracy, ECD and Technology in Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Namibia and Tanzania.		Continue to provide professional development for educators and administrators in Southern Africa and to integrate this programming with educational programming that is based on the Bridgeit model first introduced in Tanzania in 2009.

Valuing our people

Target 2009		Progress		Plan 2010
Focus our international moves to develop our rising stars and create assignments that even more closely match our corporate priorities.		Ongoing. The NewDirections team has now aligned the initiative with our annual talent review process and worked hard to create greater synergy between NewDirections placements and the business needs of Pearson in each of the regions.		Continue to develop our emerging leaders through international experience and support Pearson's needs in our developing markets.
Show evidence of progress in retention of people with diverse backgrounds for both entry level and management positions by tracking the success of women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and those with a disability within Pearson. Develop more programmes and relationships to attract talented people from the above groups into our business.		Achieved. We have maintained the segment of our UK workforce from a minority ethnic background (14%) and minority representation in the US workforce now stands at 20.6%, up from 19.9% in 2008. Minority managers still make up 12% of the US management team. About 60% of Pearson UK staff are female (compared with 51% of the UK population) and 62% of Pearson UK's managers are female. Pearson wide, 27% of Pearson top 100 managers are female. In the UK, Pearson was awarded Gold Standard in the 2009 Race for Opportunity Benchmarking survey on race equality in UK organisations, and our UK diversity summer internship programme was shortlisted for the Race for Opportunity Widening the Talent Pool Award for work to increase the diversity of our workforce.		Continue to show evidence of progress in retention of people with diverse backgrounds for both entry level and management positions by tracking the success of women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and those with a disability within Pearson. Continue to develop programmes and relationships to attract talented people from the above groups into our business.
Increase our capacity to combine training opportunities for our staff with opportunities to partner with schools, colleges and not-for-profits.		Ongoing. Edexcel staff in London have partnered with a nearby school to provide career coaching and mentoring to students. Students in the UK now benefit from a Pearson Student Advisory Board, mirroring the established PSAB in the US to provide student feedback and input to Pearson, while offering mentoring and internship opportunities to talented students.		Continue to develop our capacity to combine training opportunities for our staff with opportunities to partner with schools, colleges and not-for-profits.

Sustainable business practice

Target 2009		Progress		Plan 2010
Continue to expand our network of environmental teams across our businesses. Directly involving many more of our people.		Ongoing. Our Green Teams are now flourishing in Pearson facilities across the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, India and Southern Africa.		Continue to expand and consolidate our network of environmental teams across our businesses.
Hold training refresher seminars with key Pearson production departments on labour standards and environmental issues.		Achieved. We are working with relevant production staff at the Financial Times to review processes and environmental concerns.
Continue the process of becoming a climate neutral company		Achieved. Pearson reached climate neutrality at the end of 2009 following a two-year programme of investment and offset activity.		Having completed our 2007 commitment, we are considering our next steps and will communicate our longer term environmental commitment later this year.
Programmes of activity include:		Highlights include:		Programmes of activity will include:
Extend Planet Pearson, a new website designed by Pearson staff in the US, to be available internationally.		International roll-out of Planet Pearson is ongoing, but the site is now available to staff in Canada and at many locations in the US.		Further development of the Planet Pearson website by Pearson staff.
Continue programme to ensure our key buildings are energy efficient.		Carried out substantial investment in server virtualisation across US, Australia and the UK. Completed the ISO 14001 environmental management system for businesses in the UK.		Continuation of our programme to make our key buildings energy efficient.
FT newspaper to assess feasibility of setting up its own offset programme.		FT newspaper successfully set up its own offset programme by developing the FT Rainforest in Costa Rica.		Completing the ISO 14001 environmental management system for our business in Australia.
Purchase 'green' energy where available and affordable.		Shifting to purchase green electricity wherever possible in the UK and US, equivalent to 100,000 metric tonnes of CO₂.
		Generating renewable electricity via the solar panels on the roof of our Old Tappan site in New Jersey, US.
Continue to work with industry partners to establish a methodology to assess the carbon footprint of a book.		Ongoing. Penguin UK has now measured the carbon footprint of a medium size paperback book, and this is in progress at Pearson Education.		Continue to work with industry partners to establish a methodology to assess the carbon footprint of a textbook.
Maintain our position in the key indices of social responsibility.		Achieved. Pearson retained its position as Global Leader for the Media Sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and its Platinum rating in the Business in the Community Responsibility Index.		Maintain our position in the key indices of social responsibility.
				New target Establish a total carbon footprint identification initiative for our company.
				New target Establish FSC chain of custody certification for our paper use in our North American businesses.

Active citizenship

Target 2009		Progress		Plan 2010
Increase the number of children reached through these campaigns, expanding Booktime once again and rolling out Jumpstart's Read for the Record programme internationally.		Achieved. Booktime: 750,000 book packs donated to children in schools across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Read for the Record: Pearson people around the world again helped set a new world record for the largest 'shared reading experience' for Jumpstart's 2009 campaign. Shared more than two million books and raised $1.5m for Jumpstart's year-round operations, helping to draw national attention to the US early education crisis.		Increase the impact on children and adults reached through these campaigns, focusing Booktime funds more strategically and rolling out Jumpstart's Read for the Record programme further internationally.
Increase the number of interventions we make to facilitate constructive debate on key contemporary issues.		Achieved. The FT held its first conference on corporate responsibility and investing in March 2009 – the FT Sustainable Business and Responsible Investing Conference in New York. Plans are underway for a live panel debate at Pearson's London head office on the responsibility priorities for a 21st century media organisation, to be streamed in real-time via an interactive social media platform.		Increase the number of interventions we make to facilitate constructive debate on key contemporary issues.
				New target Launch the Pearson Prize in the US, identifying students currently in a two- or four-year college/university who are working on specific projects that support their institution and/or local communities, and providing a package of financial and in-kind support to help these students finish their college careers.

	Target ongoing
	Target achieved
	New target for 2010