Why is it that some children succeed despite a lack of phonic teaching?

Yes BUT …

In order for students to become literate via exclusive Whole Language teaching – the following has to be true:
The student must be able to pay attention & to keep paying attention without becoming 
distracted.
The student can see, hear, speak & move with clarity & precision.
The student can also process what he/she sees & hears.
The student must be able to form letters the same way every time.

If the child can master the above basic tasks the following additional capabilities are then required…

• The student has sufficient memory storage (VAS level) to instantly recognise that ‘horse’ & ‘house’ do not look alike.
• The student understands that ‘house’ & ‘mouse’ do ‘look alike’ (share common letter patterns).
• The student can readily hear that ‘house’ & ‘mouse’ sound alike (rhyme).
• The student has effective strategies for storing useful & relevant incoming information.
• The student has sufficient intelligence to filter, classify & prioritise new incoming information.
• The student can quickly and efficiently recall previous relevant learning.
• The student can make associations and think about relevant questions.

When students can perform all of these tasks they are in a position to ‘self-teach’ 
because only then can they fill in all the holes in whole-language teaching.

Unfortunately only the top 15% to 20% of learners have all these skills and even then at times many of these still pay a penalty.

The less these attributes are developed, the less chance the student has of succeeding.
Young learners are therefore at a disadvantage because many of these attributes are 
still forming. In contrast a phonics-first approach does NOT require a high VAS and is also less reliant 
on most of the above attributes apart from phonological coding.