Award-winning teacher, author and AI innovator Lee Parkinson has been recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours; offering fresh insight into how technology can fix the teacher workload crisis.
Lee Parkinson MBE, better known online and in staffrooms nationwide as ‘Mr P’, has been appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to education in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours.
A practising primary teacher who still splits his week between Year 4 lessons and nationwide CPD workshops, Parkinson has spent nearly two decades helping schools embed technology that raises attainment while reducing workload.
Through his live training, award-winning TeachMateAI platform and the chart-topping Two Mr Ps in a Podcast, he now reaches over one million educators and supports 350,000 UK teachers who say the time he has saved them was a decisive factor in 75 % choosing to remain in the profession.
Lee, partnered with his brother Adam as ‘the Two Mr Ps’, embark on a third sell-out theatre tour of their hit podcast this autumn and into spring 2026, and release the paperback of their third Sunday Times bestselling book ‘How To Survive The School Year’ on 3rd July.
About Lee Parkinson:
Lee Parkinson, Mr P, has been a Primary School Teacher for 17 years, during which time he has built a wealth of ideas for how technology can be embedded right across the curriculum. He continues to work part time in school and also leads CPD and INSET training throughout the UK and beyond focusing on raising standards in the classroom through technology. He has supported hundreds of schools and thousands of teachers make better use of technology in their classrooms.
Through his humorous and engaging approach to life in the classroom, he has been able to support and help teachers transform their curriculum to inspire, empower and make learning more purposeful and accessible for their pupils. Mr P is passionate about helping as many teachers get a decent work/life balance. He takes a blunt and frank approach to certain classroom practices before sharing ideas and approaches that help raise standards without creating unnecessary workload. He is also one of the founders of TeachMateAI.com, an award-winning platform that harnesses and fine tunes language-based AI to support teachers with a range of tasks. TeachMate is the leading AI platform for teachers in the UK, supporting over 250,000 teachers get a better work/life balance, saving them on average over 10+ hours a week, proven to help keep teachers in the profession.
From sharing helpful advice, inspiring ideas and funny insights into life in the classroom, he has become one of the most trusted voices for teachers and educators in the UK, amassing a following of over 900,000 across his platforms – one of the most followed teachers in the UK online. At present, he has over 450k followers on Facebook, 255k on Instagram, 200k on TikTok (with almost 9m likes) and 60k on X. Mr P can also be seen as the resident ‘go to’ teacher on This Morning (ITV), Lorraine (ITV), as well as creating content in the education space for the BBC. He also appeared on ‘The News Agents’ podcast to talk about the current state of Ofsted. He was recently named the top education influencer according to a Teacher Tapp Survey and has won Teach Primary’s ‘Social Media Saviour’ award.
