Director Shareholding

Pearson PLC
4 January 2001



Pearson plc - Notification of Directors' Interests

Pearson operates the Annual Bonus Share Matching Plan (the 'Plan') whereby
executive directors and certain senior executives are able to elect to invest
their annual bonus in ordinary shares in the Company ('Shares').  The
participant is then entitled to receive, after tax thereon, one additional Share
free of charge for every Share left in trust for five years (or half that number
of additional shares after three years).   Entitlement to the additional shares
is dependent on Pearson satisfying a corporate performance target and will
normally be lost if the participant leaves Pearson's employment.

On 4 January 2001, Mourant & Co Limited, as trustees of the Pearson plc Employee
Share Ownership Trust (a discretionary trust under which all employees of the
Pearson group are potential beneficiaries) purchased 58,343 shares at 1595.54p
in order to have available the full number of additional shares which may be
transferred to executive directors and senior executives in due course in
satisfaction of their rights to additional shares under the Plan.  All the
executive directors, being Marjorie Scardino, John Makinson and David Bell, are
deemed for Companies Act purposes to be interested in all these shares.

Following this purchase, the Pearson plc Employee Share Ownership Trust holds a
total of 1,018,384 shares representing 0.1277% of the issued share capital of
the Company.