Lexonik: “Our reading age gains are rapid”

CEO Sarah Ledger reflects on the growth of literacy business Lexonik, as it celebrates its 15th birthday…

30 Second Briefing

Lexonik is a leading literacy intervention provider, achieving outstanding reading age gains. It’s staffed by literacy experts and former teachers, and delivers innovative tech to track progress.

How does Lexonik transform lives through literacy?

SL: We are an intervention provider, led by the belief that nobody should be limited because they can’t read.

Back in 1999, our founder, Katy Parkinson, began a decade of research into how an effective tool could be created to help students learn how to decode and comprehend words more effectively.

Her work led to our suite of programmes, which have since been acknowledged by the National Literacy Trust and the Department for Education.

What are the programme options?

We have Leap, which resolves phonics gaps for those who find literacy a particular challenge (and is also great for EAL students). It’s based on an initial diagnostic assessment and then small-group delivery.

Lexonik Advance rapidly improves reading fluency, comprehension and spelling – resulting in an average reading age gain of 27 months in just six weekly one-hour sessions.

Vocabulary Plus is a schoolwide teaching tool for explicit vocabulary instruction.

Do teachers reap the benefit too?

Absolutely. Our teachers tell us that they love the training and gain confidence from it. They really take great pride and joy in seeing how much more engaged their students are afterwards – not just in reading, but across their academic work as a whole.

We stay in touch with teachers, providing them with regular training and support, and of course, they can access students’ progress via our online platform.

“Our teachers tell us that they love the training and gain confidence from it.”

Tell us about your company’s journey to date…

We are still headquartered in the North-East, but have grown significantly in recent years and currently have more than 40 employees. We now teach and implement our programmes around the world too, with a growing foothold in the USA and Dubai.

We’re currently delivering on a DfE grant, and are soon to reveal some even more exciting aspects to our tech offer.

And now you’re celebrating your birthday with something special?

We’re marking our 15th anniversary year with the launch of our Awards, which will celebrate the amazing literacy progress stories of our customers, and acknowledge other schools that have great libraries, wonderful literacy cultures or great reading teachers.

We’re also launching a very special award, in honour of our founder, Katy. You can find out more at lexonik.co.uk/awards.

For more information, contact phil.luke@lexonik.co.uk, quoting TEACH SECONDARY.