UK-based Pearson Group, the global media, education and publishing behemoth (annual revenue $8 billion or Rs.36,000 crore), which inter alia owns the Financial Times, Pearson Education and Penguin Books, is deepening its engagement with Indian education. Fast on the heels of the launch of several products, services and joint ventures including Pearson VUE, Edexcel, Clinical and Talent Assessment and IndiaCan (with the Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd), Pearson is all set to roll out its Pearson Test of English-Academic (PTE-Academic) in early spring (March-April) for Indian students at Indian (cf. global) prices. This was announced by Mark Anderson, president (global strategy and business development) of Pearson Education International, while on a recent visit to India.
“India’s business and education environment is vibrant, stimulating and of strategic importance to Pearson. India hosts the world’s largest child population which suffers an education deficit. We discern a huge mutually beneficial opportunity to help bridge this deficit,” observes Anderson, an alumnus of Cambridge University and Ashridge Business School, UK, who first signed up with Pearson Education in 1984 but quit in 1997 to promote a professional publishing and information enterprise before rejoining in 2007.
Currently an estimated 2.5 million students write English language proficiency tests annually with Indian students comprising 10 percent of the global cohort. Since launching its own PTE-Academic in October 2009 in competition with the US-based ETS, British Council Cambridge ESOL and IDP Education Australia which together administer English language proficiency tests TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (International English Language Testing Service), PTE Academic has made a good start in the Indian market. “With 2,130 universities and higher education institutions in the US, UK, Australia and other countries accepting PTE-Acad-emic scores as proof of English language proficiency, we have made a good start. But given that there are 7,000 higher education institutions including some Indian business schools which demand proof of English language proficiency, the market is huge and growing,” says Anderson.
In quick time, Pearson has established 15 secure PTE-Academic testing centres where students can write this English proficiency test at their own conven-ience and receive their grading — all online — within five days.
A ten-strong PTE-Academic South Asia team headed by John K. Philip, is actively scaling up operations and propagating the virtues of PTE-Academic. “We have invested our global experience in education, English language publishing and wide-range education services in PTE-Academic. As Indian higher education is deregulated, we will have opportunities to expand our language training and testing services. The diversity and richness of the emerging education environment in India is very exciting for us in the Pearson Group,” enthuses Anderson.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)