Around two thirds of nearly 500 Victorian Catholic schools are still teaching Reading Recovery, a program which was found to be ineffective for most students in a recent NSW Education Department report.

But Catholic Education Melbourne's executive director, Stephen Elder, who confirmed the figure, said that Reading Recovery was used "as just one of a range of literacy programs".

It comes as research shows that a majority of 78 Victorian primary school teachers had "limited" knowledge about fundamental components of literacy and language instruction, including phonics – a teaching method that matches letters and sounds.

Education researcher and lead author Hannah Stark said when the teachers were asked how many sounds were in the word "box", less than 5 per cent correctly reported that it included four sounds, and not three.

"We have 26 letters in the English language, but 44 sounds. It's a tricky system to understand," said Ms Stark, of Melbourne University.

Education experts and speech pathologists have warned that schools were still relying on literacy programs that did not adequately provide students with an awareness of sounds in words – or spelling patterns.

Vice President of Learning Difficulties Australia, Alison Clarke, who is also a speech pathologist, said popular literacy programs taught a mixture of phonics and another technique called 'whole language' - a method which encourages learners to understand a word from its context.

Ms Clarke, a supporter of phonics, said the blended approach was too complex for students who were just learning to read and threatened to exclude vulnerable students.

"If you're little and you're just learning how to read the words off the page, you don't have the cognitive memory and horsepower to do that kind of high-level stuff," she said.

But president of the Primary English Teaching Association of Australia, Dr Robyn Cox, said teachers taught phonics as part of the "vast repertoire" of strategies.

She said the so-called 'reading wars' was a tired argument and the teaching profession had moved on.

"There is no silver bullet," said the associate professor of literacy education at the Australian Catholic University.

"Of course students must know phonics sound and symbols."

The Victorian director of the Australian Literary Educators Association, Dr Debra Edwards, said she did not have a problem with Reading Recovery, claiming the early intervention program included some phonics instruction, and helped struggling students "excel in the mainstream classroom".

Only 10 per cent of Victorian government primary schools offered Reading Recovery in 2014, the most recent figures show. This was down from 25 per cent the previous year.

Jo Wheeler, principal of Westgarth Primary School, rolled out a phonics program called Little Learners Love Literacy for all prep students a year ago.

She said 12 students of 90 were falling behind the benchmark before the program, but that number had since dropped to just three.

The school also incorporated elements of the whole language approach.

"In my experience, children who will be able to learn from whole language will learn from anything, and children who can't learn from that will need specific phonics instruction," said Ms Wheeler.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the Turnbull government was implementing a renewed emphasis on phonics in the national curriculum and an even greater focus on phonics in teacher training.