I didn't learn phonics in school, while my only 2-year younger sibling did (not sure why, maybe related to the school being super low income?) yet I always had a much higher grade reading level. Obviously that's just one point of anecdata, but I don't think phonics is a very big influence on literacy, and why would it be? pronunciation is one tiny part of reading. I think the sheer amount of time spent online is probably the biggest culprit.
anarticle|21 days ago
The current system in the USA is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
This is a bottom up vs top down approach. The claim is that whole word reading gets you reading faster and so it has a knock on effect. Phonics was completely removed from curriculums under "Whole Word" and "Balanced Literacy" movements(!?). The claim being that phonics is meaningless because it's technical and "people care about story telling!" and more. Note, these are not my opinions I am restating recent "discoveries". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Calkins
This rhymes with how people thought common core math was better because it didn't contain all of that annoying practice. Now that kids cannot interpret similar words at all (ex: house, boat, houseboat, boathouse), now they're bringing phonics as "science of reading".
My point of all this, is why do we keep throwing out DECADES of work for fringe theories justified by kooks in an attempt to min max a KPI? It all implies that high level skills are not built from fundamentals but instead osmosed, as if you either get it or you don't which seems to be how these models view high skills. Seems crazy to me!