My mother, Gwyn Singleton, who has died aged 87, was a pioneer of dyslexia education in the west of Scotland in the 1970s.
Born in Edinburgh, she was raised in Glasgow, where her father, J Mouland Begbie, was leader of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Her mother, Ena (nee Davis-Jones) was a primary teacher until she married.
Gwyn attended Laurel Bank school, Glasgow, and despite early dreams of going to Paris to work in couture, she trained as a teacher at Jordanhill College, Glasgow, and that became her lifelong vocation.
Her first teaching job was at Haggs Hill primary school, Glasgow. In 1959 she married Ronald Singleton and they had four children. She was a full-time mother for several years. The marriage later ended in divorce.
As she rebuilt her career in the70s, she developed an interest in teaching pupils with dyslexia – an area of specialism that was radical and new. With a few others she started and led Dyslexia ScotWest to provide one-to-one specialist support. She would spend long hours on the phone comforting and advising distraught mothers who had no idea how to help their struggling children.
After training as a specialist dyslexia teacher at the Dyslexia Institute in Scotland, Gwyn went back to full-time teaching in schools in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Like many women of her generation, she felt that she had missed out by not going to university and so completed an Open University degree in education, graduating in the late 1980s. Through the OU she met David Moseley, who became her partner for the second half of her life.
She moved to Newcastle and worked at Nunnykirk, a specialist school, until retiring in 1999. In retirement, she and David worked together on a spelling dictionary for children with dyslexia, which was published in several editions.
She loved Newcastle and made many friends there. Her retirement years were busy with music and concerts and visits to her children and grandchildren.
David died in July this year. She is survived by her four children, Julia, Hilary, Gregor and me, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
