Tees Business | Page 37

Serving the Teesside Business Community | 37 / MIDDLESBROUGH NEWS EDUCATIONAL INNOVATORS LAUNCH LITERACY PARTNERSHIP Two of Teesside’s foremost education organisations have launched a collaborative project to raise the literacy levels of local students. Middlesbrough College has agreed an innovative partnership with Sound Training that has resulted in the college now having eight specialist teachers trained and licensed to deliver a ground-breaking teaching programme throughout the college. Middlesbrough-based Sound Training’s fast-growing teaching programme delivers a dramatic impact on the literacy levels of students of all ages and abilities in just six hour-long sessions. While Sound Training has established working partnerships with more than 300 primary and secondary schools across the UK, Middlesbrough College is the first solely post-16 provider to license the ground- breaking teaching programme. To celebrate the launch of the new partnership, 450 of the college’s teaching and leadership staff attended a Sound Training live demonstration and workshop. Katy Parkinson, founder director of a company that now employs 100 staff across the country including 20 on Teesside, led an on-stage demonstration of a typical Sound Training lesson. Following the demonstration, all college teaching staff participated in workshops that focused on morphology – the structure of words – and etymology – the origins of words. Middlesbrough College principal and chief executive Zoe Lewis said: “We alrea