Dogman, Bunny versus Monkey, and the like: are they really a bridge to more fluent reading, or actually just a literacy dead end?!
My son was obsessed with these books when younger, and yet his teachers at secondary school in England say he's well above the expected reading level. I'm a great believer in letting kids read what they want (he also loved the Beano) to increase reading stamina whether that is graphic novels, football facts books or the Rainbow Fairies/Enid Blyton/Harry Potter (pick your preferred contentious literature). If you love what you read you will read more of it and when learning to read that's important. My English DDs were obsessed with Heartstopper and they got both good grades in GCSE English. FWIW there were kids at their (middle class catchment) secondary school who couldn't read when they left primary, it's something that happens in all education systems and it's about what happens at home as much as what happens at school. Synthetic Phonics alone isn't the answer to all reading difficulties (dyslexic society says 25% of children won't learn with Synthetic Phonics alone) and shouldn't be seen as a cure all. My children had phonics lessons in school in England but they all learnt to read with the (non-phonics) Biff, Chip and Kipperbooks as well.
There were also regular fights at their secondary school, including one where a teacher was injured as she tried to stop it. @Scrumptiouslyy seems to be determined to think everything bad about the Scottish system and everything good about other systems rather than accepting her kids didn't go to a good school (and possibly weren't that academic).
So, some more anecdotes.
First, when my eldest was at nursery one of the other parents complained to me that the nursery weren't teaching our 3 year olds how to read and write. I knew they were because DD1 was writing notes to me all the time. If her DC wasn't reading and writing it was probably because they weren't ready to yet or because they weren't reproducing it at home, not because nursery weren't teaching it to kids that were ready and interested. If I believed what my 14yo told me about school I'd think all he did was PE and have lunch. And yet I know from my other children they do more than that.
When I was at school in Scotland in the 80s my English teachers at the time said thst while we did a lot of literature at our school there generally wasn't an emphasis on literature in Scottish schools in comparison to A level literature. So it's not necessarily a recent issue that some schools in Scotland don't teach a lot of literature. And yet historically we had very high reading scores in the PISA assessments.
There's a poster on the 50 bookers thread on here who teaches English in a school in Italy, she's very critical of the way they teach literature, that long list shared above is inaccessible to most pupils and so they have to teach it using short paragraphs and teaching the mark scheme.
As far as the PISA rankings go there's a lot of discussion about England vs Scotland here but both are well above Wales which has an exam system very similar to England's but has PISA scores below the OECD average. England's change of focus since 2009 has put it on a similar footing to countries in Asia and ahead of most countries in Europe, they are chasing PISA scores as something easy to measure, that doesn't mean their approach is correct for a good broad education. In comparison, Scotland has 488 in reading, 467 in maths, and 491 in science. These are not actually bad scores. It is fourth in Europe for reading after England, Ireland and Estonia (and ahead of Italy). 15th in Europe for Maths between Italy and Germany and 9th in Europe for science between Begium and Czechia. It's dropping compared to our historic highs but we're not dropping as fast as the rest of the western world post Covid. However, PISA scores are just one part of teenage life, e.g. our teenagers (in both Scotland and England) are much likely to suffer depression than Dutch teenagers who have very low PISA rankings for reading.
Scottish education has issues, and Scottish people are probably more sensitive than most about falling down the rankings because historically we did so well. But it's not as bad as some posters keep insisting. And it will be correctable once the political will is there.