The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) and the British Pearson Education signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), on the sidelines of the 2026 Education World Forum, to strengthen ways and mechanisms of cooperation in improving teaching methods and developing a school assessment guide.
The MoU was signed on Monday, 18 May 2026, in London, by Dr. Ahmed Albanyan, Supervisor of the Education Sector and Head of the Translation and Publishing Center at ICESCO, and Ms. Freya Thomas Monk, Senior Vice President of Pearson Education. On this occasion, Dr. Albanyan affirmed that this partnership represents an important step towards developing education systems within and beyond the countries of the Islamic world, through strengthening teachers’ skills, integrating technology and artificial intelligence into education in the Organization’s Member States, and improving assessment systems.
For her part, Ms. Monk highlighted the importance of harnessing education and modern technologies to support educational initiatives and exchange international expertise to keep pace with the developments of the era and find sustainable solutions to the challenges of the field.
The provisions of the MoU include cooperation in developing the “ICESCO-Pearson Guide for School Assessment Standards” to standardize school assessment across the countries of the Islamic world, and to implement activities and projects in several fields, foremost among them strengthening foundational education for all, developing tools to assess reading, writing, and numeracy skills, as well as teaching methods, developing school curricula, in addition to providing training opportunities for teachers, and harnessing modern technologies in professional development and distance learning platforms, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and information and data management.
The signing ceremony of the MoU was attended by Mr. Waqas Afridi and Ms. Faizah Alaoui, experts at the Education Sector.
