(Ellen) Nellie Dale started the earliest school-based literacy education in the UK, at Wimbledon High School from 1892 to 1909.

In 1898, she published On the Teaching of English Reading. The book taught the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness. She taught the voiced and unvoiced consonants, vowels and silent letters by using different colors (black, blue, red and yellow, and she had her students step out the syllables.