Much bickering in the playground resulted from the publication of the largest inquiry into primary education for 40 years when it came to the disagreeable conclusion that – despite the £500 million poured into beefing-up literacy – government investment has had “almost no impact” and schooling standards have barely improved since the 1950s. “S’not true!” squeaked Lord Adonis, the Schools Minister. “Tis, too!” retorted teachers. I tend to believe the teachers; nobody can know better the rigours of the cat on the mat.

The problem with such internecine wrangling, however, is that it serves to consolidate the view that the whole matter is for the State and nothing much to do with the rest of us. In fact, the biggest difference between the 1950s and now is that back then we knew better.

When I started school at that time I already read fluently, as did most of the rest of my, admittedly white, middle-class contemporaries; being taught to read was as much a part of home preparation for the wider world as was learning to handle a spoon. And I don’t mean the wussy stuff about being read bedtime stories, either – about the only thing parents are these days encouraged to do, but which half of them don’t – I mean lessons with the clear goal of solo flights with Blyton by 5.

Not all parents could do this, of course; adult illiteracy was a problem then as now. But if you could, you did – as, in turn, I taught my daughter and she taught her best friend when they were 4.

Today, according to one head teacher friend, only about 35 per cent arrive at school with “some words”; almost none is able to tackle a book. Some of this is can be blamed on indolence or lack of aspiration in the parents; too much, though, is the result of not daring, rather than not caring. So hammered are parents by the professionalisation of what was once a simple passing down of family skills, so in hock are they to educational fashion – “There is only one way to teach children to read English properly,” decrees Melanie Phillips, an enthusiast for synthetic phonics, in her blog in the Spectator – that they are made helpless by the fear of getting it “wrong”.

I’d never heard of the excellent phonics system when I used flash cards on my lass – complete, favourite words writ large and considered wildly naughty today. And Miss Phillips would surely shudder to think what “method” my daughter used on her four-year-old friend. I willingly concede that there may be better and worse ways to teach reading. But there can be nothing worse than haranguing the best-intentioned of parents, belittling their amateurism and having their children arrive at school wholly, but needlessly, illiterate because Mum was just too scared to suck it and see.

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