An education policy that doesn’t include lavishing more money on schools? Outrageous!

That’s been the common response to the federal government’s plan to introduce a test in Year 1 to assess literacy, numeracy, and phonics.

There is a lot of evidence that a phonics check, in particular, will be an effective measure to assess the efficacy of phonics teaching in Australia and identify at an early stage children who are struggling with basic reading skills — as my colleague Jennifer Buckingham and other experts have shown.