The voice of business in the Tees region | 75
SPREADING THE WORD
On a mission - pictured with founder director
Katy Parkinson, Phil Luke has joined fast-growing
Lexonik as business development consultant.
P
hil Luke has been “Lexonified” – and
now he wants every school-age
child on Teesside to have the same
experience.
Phil, whose background is in banking and
financial services, recently joined rapidly-
expanding Teesside-based educational
firm Lexonik as a business development
consultant and has set about his new role
with a missionary zeal.
Having seen the dramatic results their
revolutionary literacy teaching programme
is having in schools in other parts of the UK
and throughout the world, he’s passionate
about giving as many local youngsters as
possible the same opportunity.
“It’s an amazing system,” he enthuses.
“The results are spectacular and it can help
turn schools around. It’s Latin-based and is
all about looking at the stem of a word and
its prefix and suffix.
“It’s delivered to small groups and
rapidly improves literacy, language and
comprehension skills and confidence, with
reading ages increasing by an average of 27
months after just six hourly sessions over
six weeks.
“I’ve seen it in operation at Nunthorpe
School. By the end of the six weeks, the
children were breaking down words such
as ‘photosynthesis’ and ‘perpendicular’
and telling me what every part of the word
means.
Phil’s mission
to share the
Lexonik lesson
By Michael McGeary
“Anyone who gets the opportunity to see
it in action should do so – it changes the
way you think about words and gives you a
skill for life.”
Phil adds: “As part of my induction, I
was ‘Lexonified’ by Katy Parkinson, who
founded the company as Sound Training in
2011 and who developed the system.
“She sat down and showed me what the
kids are taught and a couple of hours later
I was looking at language in a completely
different way.
“I’ve never seen anything like her passion
and drive. She’s prepared to travel round
the world promoting literacy and the way
she delivers the programme makes it fun
as well.”
Middlesbrough-born Phil is a fully
qualified financial adviser who also runs
his own equity release business, Luke For
Solutions.
“I’m interested in education because my
mam and dad both taught in this area and I
always fancied being a teacher myself,” he
says.
“I can see how much this helps children
and adults as well – it’s being used in Holme
House prison and prisons in America. I’m
delighted to have an opportunity to get it
out there.
“Lexonik is growing all the time because
the potential is so huge – the business
has brought in a commercial director and a
sales manager and we’re now recruiting
account managers, so there’s a lot going
on.”
The system is currently used by around
700 schools and the firm has ambitious
plans to continue reaching new markets.
“It’s already broken into the Middle
East and the USA and has just been
demonstrated at a conference in Spain,”
he says.
But one of Phil’s key challenges is
ensuring that children closer to home
become part of the Lexonik revolution and
benefit from its impressive results.
“There’s a heat-map of the country in
the office and very few schools round
here are using the system,” he says.
“It’s in a couple of primary schools and
Acklam Grange, Nunthorpe School and
Carmel College in Darlington, but I’m
surprised it isn’t being used more widely
here. That needs addressing.
“Literacy is a massive problem
everywhere, but in an area like ours,
we need kids leaving school with good
literacy skills to prepare them for the
world of work.
“There are lots of reasons to be
optimistic about Teesside’s future but it’s
essential that we raise literacy levels.
Lexonik can help do that. And once kids
are armed with this knowledge, it will
stay with them forever.”