UK Publisher, Pearson, has given assurances that UK lobby groups supporting the State of Israel will no longer play a role in their editorial decision-making process in the soon to be released textbook covering the Middle East.
Pearson, a major international education company, which oversees national exams for 14- to 16-year-olds in the UK, came under the spotlight over two of its GCSE school textbooks, after revelations last year that they had been significantly altered following pressure from pro-Israel groups. GCSEs are the academic qualifications studied for by UK high school students to the age of 16.
Details of the extensive “biased” and “misleading” alterations were exposed by a report, by Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, Middle East specialists in History and in Arabic, respectively, and members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).
Their eight-page report uncovered “dangerously misleading” changes to the books published by Pearson, titled “Conflict in the Middle East” and “The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change”, both by author Hilary Brash, which are read by hundreds of thousands of GCSE students annually.
The alterations were made following intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Both are amongst the most vocal pro-Israeli groups in the UK.