Cambridge reaches 100 million learners milestone

Cambridge University Press & Assessment has announced it is reaching more than 100 million students and other learners, across more than 170 countries.

The news comes two years after Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press came together as a single organisation in August 2021. The two organisations set a target of reaching 100 million learners by 2026, which has been met ahead of schedule.

Cambridge supports this number of learners through exams such as GCSEs and IGCSEs, A levels and Cambridge Nationals, English language tests and tools including IELTS and Linguaskill, reference sources such as Cambridge Dictionary Online, and through Cambridge curricula, support for teachers and education reform programmes.

The Academic team also enables researchers to access academic books, research journals and other scholarly materials. Researchers reportedly downloaded 114 million of them digitally over the last year, in addition to all the physical copies they read.

Within the last year, more than 50% of Cambridge University Press journal articles were published open access, and the organisation said it is on course for the vast majority of its research papers to be open access by 2025.

This year, Cambridge removed open access publication fees for scholars from more than 100 low- and middle-income countries to expand access to material.

Peter Phillips, chief executive of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, said: “This is a moment to celebrate. I’m delighted that we have passed our target of reaching more than 100 million learners, something which has happened only because of our deep commitment to students and teachers and to the quality of our assessments and learning materials to support them.

“Each of those learners has their own story, aspirations and potential. Our commitment to every one of them has remained the same, and will remain the same, regardless of how many more people we reach.”