Vera Southgate

Vera Southgate (10 March 1916 – 23 March 1995) was a British educationalist who dedicated herself to improving how children were taught to read English from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, a period when many different methods were practised, including the initial teaching alphabet, phonics, and whole language.

Vera Southgate was a prolific author of academic papers, developed the Southgate reading tests, and even served on the Bullock government inquiry.

She also evaluated the initial teaching alphabet on behalf of the British government.

Her final major research project was a five-year study aimed at improving the reading skills of older children.

The resulting publication, Extended Beginning Reading, won the UK Reading Association's Book of the Year award.

Vera Southgate wrote over fifty primers and reading books, often included in basal reading schemes.

These books provided a structured, step-by-step approach to teaching children to read.

She gained widespread recognition for the Well-loved Tales, a Ladybird-graded reading book series, which sold 80 million copies but reached a much larger audience through schools and libraries.

Thanks to her contributions, Vera Southgate was named the 7th president of the United Kingdom Reading Association and was posthumously inducted into the association's Hall of Fame.

Vera Pigg was born on March 10, 1916, in County Durham.

Along with her sister Mary, she trained and became a teacher.

After her initial schooling, Vera Southgate trained as a teacher and by 1939 had taken up a teaching post in Seaham, County Durham.

From this start, Vera went on to teach at infant, junior, secondary, and special schools which provided her with a broad experience of teaching children.

Having established a base of sound teaching experience, Vera went back to furthering her education by attending Birmingham University where she initially studied for a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) in social studies then followed up with a Master of Arts (MA) in Education.

Vera also acquired a Diploma in Psychology (Dip Psych)

These qualifications enabled her to become the Head of the Remedial Education service which enhanced her experience and reputation even further allowing her entry into academia.

In 1942, she married Arthur Southgate and stopped teaching to become a housewife.

Unfortunately, Arthur died in 1948, leaving Vera a widow at the young age of 32.

She returned to work and moved to Manchester, where she met Douglas Thomas Booth.

By 1957, Southgate had taken up a post as a lecturer in curriculum development at the School of Education at the University of Manchester, where she initially focused in the organisation of teacher training for teachers already in-service at Primary Schools.

Between 1957 and 1962, Vera Southgate developed the Southgate group reading tests, which were noteworthy for their ability to identify backward readers.

The Southgate group reading tests consisted of the following: –

These were famously used in the National Child Development Study (a longitudinal study), where the tests were applied on the sample children born in 1958, when they reached age seven in 1965.

As the i.t.a. was initially a spectacular success, its usage expanded rapidly through the UK and across the English speaking world through the early 1960s, this was done in parallel to seventeen research studies which measured the performance of the i.t.a. By 1966, the Ministry of Education through the Schools Council, undertook an independent evaluation of the i.t.a. and all the published research to-date.

They got married in 1961, and Vera became known as Vera Southgate-Booth.

However, she continued to publish under her widowed name and was publicly known as Mrs Vera Southgate.

Vera had no children, but she had a close relationship with her sister and her nephews.

Her nephews often visited her at her holiday home in Llanbedrog, where she read to them from the Ladybird Well Loved Tales, which she had retold.

Over her academic career Vera specialised in the pedagogy of reading, by 1969 her research had already been published in several books and over 70 papers in learned journals, the major works are listed below.

Vera also extensively lectured on this subject both in the UK and abroad, including international conferences.

Vera Southgate was a staunch advocate of testing and monitoring levels of attainment in reading and was accredited by the James report (1972) for her work in measuring incidents of reading failure, which had led to the Lord James's enquiry into teacher education and teacher training.

When the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.) was launched, it was the London Institute of Education which spun up the "Reading Research Unit" under the leadership of Dr. John Downing to carryout the original studies, whereas Manchester University with its esteemed School of Education which Vera Southgate was a part had remained on the sidelines, as such Vera Southgate simply observed the progress of the experiment and wrote two papers on her thoughts: –

In 1980–81, Vera retired to the coast with her husband at Sidmouth in Devon.

On her retirement in 1980, Vera Southgate donated her library of children's reading books, a collection of 2,589 books which Vera had accumulated over her two decades of study, to the John Rylands University Library of Manchester.

After Douglas died in 1986, Vera returned to County Durham to be with her extended family.

Vera Southgate continued to be accredited in academic publications for work previously done and she also continued to publish and speak until 1986, as detailed: –

The major academic works authored or co-authored by Vera Southgate were: –

Vera Southgate prolifically published academic articles and papers in education journals with the more noteworthy listed: -

The major academic highlights of Vera Southgate's career were: –

She eventually died on March 23, 1995, in Consett, County Durham.