Two recent articles from authors in Britain have attempted to show that the evidence in favour of systematic phonics in initial literacy instruction is weak; here, their arguments are disputed. Bowers ('Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction', "Educational Psychology Review," 32, 2020) attempts to show that there is little or no research evidence that systematic phonics instruction is more effective than other commonly used methods. Detailed inspection shows that his analysis appears flawed. Wyse and Bradbury ('Reading wars or reading reconciliation', "Review of Education," 10, 2022) offer four strands of evidence which, they suggest, undermine the case for systematic phonics teaching. However, they themselves admit they cannot draw conclusions from two of those strands; their survey of teachers in primary schools in England is unrepresentative and therefore unreliable; and their analysis of previous systematic reviews adopts such unnecessarily restrictive criteria that its conclusions cannot be accepted.