The owner of the Financial Times newspaper will pay 440 million pounds ($720 million) in cash and will take on 65 million pounds of debt from the Martins family and investment firm Kinea.

Pearson Chief Executive John Fallon is reorganising the company to concentrate on fast-growing economies and digital services, rather than Europe and North America, where austerity measures have hit public spending.

Brazil is the fourth-largest English language market in the world, worth 2 billion pounds per year. Demand for English speakers in the tourism and hospitality sectors is expected to rise as the country prepares to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.

"Brazilians' appetite for learning English as a global language of business and trade shows every sign of continuing to grow rapidly as Brazil becomes a global player in commerce, travel and a host of other industries," Fallon said in a statement.

The purchase comes after Pearson sold its Mergermarket financial news service for 382 million pounds on November 29.

"The company has been a good seller of assets and proceeds have been recycled into faster growing areas, in particular digital/services-related educational activities in developed and emerging markets," Citi analysts said in a research note.

"If the Mergermarket sale is a neat example of the first part of this cycle, then this transaction is a nice example of the second part of the cycle."

Pearson said in October that margins from its education business in North America, which makes up 60 percent of sales, will be lower than in 2012 as lower freshman enrolments and bookstore purchasing have dented sales of college textbooks.

Grupo Multi, which serves over 800,000 students in Brazil, delivering English language courses through school brands including Wizard, Yazigi, Microlins and Skill, posted an operating profit of 42 million pounds in 2012.

Pearson said the purchase will help it speed up the deployment of its Wall Street English language schools in Brazil, adding it plans to use Grupo Multi's products and services in its schools business and in other countries.

(Reporting by Silvia Antonioli; editing by Paul Sandle and Louise Heavens)

By Silvia Antonioli