Vice-Chancellor’s foreword

Professor Deborah Prentice

Cambridge University Press & Assessment has a profound impact on global education and research. It scales-up our University’s mission, helping Cambridge touch and improve so many millions more lives around the globe. For anyone associated with Cambridge, the Press & Assessment is a source of enormous pride.

Over the past year, I have been especially impressed by the way that Cambridge OCR has informed and influenced UK education policy with high-quality evidence, ideas and thoughtful engagement throughout the sector. The Striking the balance review made a bold and pragmatic case for changes in how we educate children between the ages of 11–16. It has been very pleasing to note that those proposals are being taken so seriously by schools, colleges and teachers, as well as by policymakers in Westminster and Whitehall.

Many of us have been equally inspired by the way Cambridge International Education is innovating with a global community of more than 10,000 schools around the world to prepare learners for a rapidly changing future. That spirit of collaboration and openness in pursuit of impact defines Cambridge at its best.

The Cambridge English group’s extraordinary delivery of language proficiency tests to millions of people makes global education, and indeed the global economy, more dynamic. Governments, businesses, schools, universities and students turn to Cambridge for trusted, rigorous and high-quality English tests.

“Significant financial support from the Press & Assessment is allowing our University to be even more ambitious and realise new forms of impact.”

Many University of Cambridge academics published world-class scholarly work through Cambridge University Press books and journals. They included Dr Barbara Sahakian and Dr Christelle Langley, whose Brain Boost gave a broad audience access to evidence-based advice on health and happiness. PhD student Ekaterina Zadirko’s fascinating study in the Cambridge-published Slavic Review shed light on the Soviet experiences of teenagers in the 1930s, and secured international media attention. They were in good company, as seven Cambridge-published authors took Nobel prizes during 2024–25.

Colleagues from the University and the Press & Assessment are partnering to make the most of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, to enhance climate education across multiple disciplines, and to deploy high-quality large language models drawing on the world-leading Cambridge Language Learning Corpus. The different parts of Cambridge have much to learn from one another, and I am excited to see so many partnerships forming across our University that take advantage of the Press & Assessment’s expertise and capabilities.

We reach

100 million

learners and teachers around the world

Significant financial support from the Press & Assessment is allowing our University to be even more ambitious and realise new forms of impact, such as in our West Cambridge innovation district. Here, we are nurturing a cluster where academic departments co-locate with industry partners, national research institutes, companies which are scaling up, and investors to create the leading location in Europe for AI, quantum and climate research. We want to create a scale of research activity that will attract leading companies and researchers, on a site designed with excellent environmental specifications and real attention to outdoor as well as indoor spaces. It will attract more researchers, teachers, and innovators from academia, industry and the start-up world to collaborate with and work at Cambridge.

The Press & Assessment’s governance remains strong. Professor Andy Neely returns to the Cambridge University Press & Assessment Board (PAB) as Chair. He succeeds Anthony Odgers who has been a great source of wisdom and advice over eight years. In the past year, Dr Carol Atack, Dr John Firth and Professor Jennifer Richards joined the Academic Publishing Committee. In the same period, Professors Kasia Boddy, Emily Gowers and Tony Minson stood down from the Academic Publishing Committee, Mr Richard Partington from the PAB, and Mr Brian Simms from the Academic Advisory Board. My thanks to all Syndics and other external members for their support and advice.

I am grateful to Peter Phillips and to all Press & Assessment colleagues around the world for their many achievements this year.

Amid global challenges, the Press & Assessment has adapted well, delivered meaningful impact for learners and researchers, and achieved impressive financial results. Above all, that helps us realise Cambridge’s mission and improve millions of lives through education and research.

Professor Deborah Prentice

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge