Socioeconomic status at the individual-and school-level are positively related to literacy achievement in all English-speaking countries. The components of socioeconomic statusincome, parent education and parent occupation -are each statistically significant predictors of school literacy achievement but they are primarily a proxy for more directly salient factors. This literature review outlines the factors that are most strongly implicated in literacy achievement. At the individual-level, they are early literacy ability, gene-environment interactions, home learning environment, time spent reading, sleep, school attendance and school mobility. At the schoollevel, they are school practices and teacher quality, including quality of initial reading instruction. These factors are interactive; not only are socioeconomically disadvantaged children more likely to experience these conditions, they are also more adversely affected by them than their more advantaged peers. This review concludes that understanding the nature of the relationship between socioeconomic status and literacy is the key to mitigating it.

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This article is a rejoinder to J.S. Bowers (2020), ‘Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction’, Educational Psychology Review (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y). There is strong agreement among reading scientists that learning the phonological connections between speech and print is an essential element of early reading acquisition. Meta-analyses of reading research have consistently found that methods of reading instruction that include systematic phonics instruction are more effective than methods that do not. This article critiques a recent article by Jeffery S. Bowers that attempts to challenge the robustness of the research on systematic phonics instruction. On this basis, Bowers proposes that teachers and researchers consider using alternative methods. This article finds that even with a revisionist and conservative analysis of the research literature, the strongest available evidence shows systematic phonics instruction to be more effective than any existing alternative. While it is fair to argue that researchers should investigate new practices, it is irresponsible to suggest that classroom teachers use anything other than methods based on the best evidence to date, and that evidence favours systematic phonics.

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