How many millions of kids through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s through to the present day, have been totally betrayed by this fraud and never been able to achieve their full potential because they were academically short changed.
Reading and comprehension feeds into every other aspect of life, no matter how humble the station.
I doubt there’s a sentient Australian that ever understood why phonics, a system that has always demonstrably worked, was replaced by something that doesn’t work or was always of dubious virtue at best.
The only reason I can come up with is that it was a deliberate (and effective) attempt to undermine the very education standard it purports to uphold and pursue and to dumb the population down.
What is even more curious is that again, given the demonstrable turn out of functional illiteracy, there has never been any pushback by Liberal or conservative governments.