Keywords: Book Printing China, Book Printing, Educational Books, Consolidation                                                                             
Compared with consumer book printing field, the consolidation in educational book printing field happened much later. The first overseas subsidiaries of England companies were opened in the late 19 and early 20 centuries in Australia and Canada, and in the 1960s the educational and academic houses opened subsidiaries in the newly formed African Commonwealth countries and exported large quantities of UK-based textbooks. The educational systems there were based on UK curricula or examinations.

Along with the economical periodic downturns, the first wave of publisher consolidation occurred during the 1980s, at that time the school pupil rolls declined, and the number of significant educational publishers decreased from around 30 to 15. Sales volumes fell from 1986 to 1990 due to the underfunding of UK state schools. UK export sales were affected by the poverty of some Commonwealth countries and a more nationalist approach around the world to the school curriculum. By the early 1990s, the top three publishers commanded 50 per cent of sales to schools; and the top seven over 75 per cent. The remaining publishers concentrated in specialist areas or subjects. In 2007, Reed Elsevier decided to sell its UK education interests (Harcourt) to Pearson, and Wolters Kluwer decided to divest its educational publishing assets (Nelson Thormes) to private equity. In this deal, the publishers involved are including Cambridge University Press, Collins Education (News Corporation), Hodder Education (Hachette), Nelson Thornes, Oxford University Press, and Pearson Education.

Except for these famous companies, rest other publishers tend to concentrate on specialism and a somewhat different range of publishers serve primary schools and the school library market, including children's publishers such as Scholastic.