Education begins with reading. Those who cannot master it are unlikely to fulfil their potential. That is universally accepted. It follows from this that how effectively children are taught to read largely determines how they will perform in primary schools and their ultimate scholastic achievements. Yet the issue of reading methods has been one of the most controversial of all the disputes that rage in education. It is to be hoped that the report released by Jim Rose, a former director of Ofsted, finally and firmly settles the matter.

When the Government introduced the initial National Literacy Strategy some seven years ago it deftly sidestepped this question. David Blunkett, the then Education Secretary, thought that it was difficult enough to impose an hour a day of formal literacy tuition on primary schools without triggering more tension with the teaching profession by instructing them how to teach children to read. This was a pragmatic decision, but it has permitted a “pick and mix” approach in which rather too many teachers have plumped for the fashionable but flawed “whole word” or “look and see” formula. As its critics have noted, “sit and hope” would be more accurate.

The Rose review, if implemented by those in charge of teacher training colleges, should end this dubious experiment. It should mean that the traditional method of breaking down a word into its sounds (synthetic phonics in the jargon) is employed, in Mr Rose’s words, “first and fast”.

The need for this innovation is illustrated by the primary school league tables for those aged 11. There has been a very modest increase in the proportion of those achieving the required standards in reading, writing and science, but there is much here for ministers to ponder. One in five children is falling short of the level desired. Only 60 per cent of children obtain these scores in each of the modern “3Rs”. A sharp gender gap is becoming embedded, with boys falling behind girls at a young age and never quite recovering. The best primary schools are storming ahead as never before, while the least satisfactory are, with certain honourable exceptions, struggling; often badly.

Standards are unlikely to improve unless a radical advance can be made in the age at which pupils read with comfort. One of the many mistakes that the “whole word” lobby makes is in insisting that children be allowed to learn to read at their own pace and that it should be a labour of love, not a chore. This is patronising, destructive nonsense. Children need to learn to read as soon as is possible. Until they can, they are left in a state of academic limbo. To teach them to break words into key sounds is not to return to Victorian schooling. It is to liberate them to enter a world of learning.

This shift in reading methodology is not, by itself, as Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, rightly said yesterday, a “magic bullet”. It does, nevertheless, mean that teachers will be shooting in the right direction. Ms Kelly has to monitor closely the implementation of this policy change. Teachers must read her lips if Britain is to end its one-in-five rate of educational failure.