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