Andy Bird, chief executive of Pearson, is leaving after after less than three years in the role, having overseeing the education group’s shift away from textbooks towards digital services.
Bird, a former Walt Disney executive who helped to develop the streaming service Disney+, will be replaced by Omar Abbosh, an executive at Microsoft.
Pearson, originally founded as a construction business back in the 1840s, is the world’s largest publisher of educational textbooks and owns Edexcel, the UK exam board.
Bird has been trying to adapt the company for a digital world in which more students get their information online — an area where it has lagged in the past. To this end he oversaw the launch of the Pearson+ app, which gives its users unlimited
