Many thousands of Australian students have very low levels of literacy after spending four or more years at school. The Spring 2014 issue of the CIS journal Policy contained an article called ‘Why Jaydon Can’t Read: How Ideology Triumphed Over Evidence in Teaching Reading’, which concluded that students were not being provided with the most effective evidence-based reading instruction in the early years of school. The article identified inadequate teacher education and ineffective literacy policy as the reasons for this enduring problem. This collection of speeches is from an event held at CIS to further the public debate generated by the Policy article, by the article’s lead author, and responses from a leading education journalist and a high-level policy maker.