Greg Brooks, an esteemed literacy expert and emeritus professor at the University of Sheffield, has passed away at the age of 81. His career was marked by significant contributions to the field of reading and spelling education.
Early Life and Education
Born in Ewell, Surrey, to Mary (nee McDarby) and Norman Brooks, an electrician, he was named Raymond but known as Greg for most of his life. At Wimbledon College secondary school, his talent for Latin and classical Greek earned him an open exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge. There, he studied classics and philosophy before pursuing a PhD on phonological coding in silent reading at the University of Leeds.
Career Highlights
Greg made his name as a literacy expert at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), where he worked for a significant part of his career. His research covered initial teaching of reading and spelling, family literacy, intervention schemes for children with poor skills, assessment of children's speaking ability, and evaluations of educational initiatives. However, his most enduring interest was in phonics, which he considered the best approach to teaching reading and spelling. While at NFER, he wrote What Works for Children With Literacy Difficulties, a textbook still in print.
He later moved to the School of Education at Sheffield University, holding a personal chair and becoming an emeritus professor upon retirement in 2007. After teaching at Kenyatta College in Nairobi, Kenya, and Friends' School in Saffron Walden, Essex, he joined NFER in Slough in 1981 and moved to Sheffield in 2000.
National and International Influence
Much in demand for his expertise, Greg served on the government's independent review committee led by Sir Jim Rose, which examined reading teaching in English primary schools and published a report in 2009. He was the only British member of the EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy, which issued a 2012 report on combating low literacy in Europe. He also served on the national executive committee of the UK Reading Association and was its president in 1999-2000.
Personal Life
Greg loved travel, classical music, art, archaeology, and Lagavulin whisky, living life to the full. His 1966 marriage to Dodie Simmonds ended in divorce in 2000. In 2010, he married research colleague Maxine Burton, who survives him, along with his sons Michael and Christopher from his first marriage, two grandchildren, and siblings Peter and Catherine.
