The lessons to be learnt from these worrying failures in the classroom

Tony Blair's oft-repeated mantra that "education, education and education" were his top three priorities was never supposed to herald a fall in reading standards in primary schools four years after Labour swept to power in 1997. Yet this is precisely what the report on Labour's much-vaunted literacy and numeracy standards by Ofsted, the Government's education standards watchdog, revealed yesterday.

Of course, it is true that the Government's innovations – the literacy strategy with its compulsory literacy hour in every primary school in 1998, and the maths strategy with its daily maths lesson in 1999 – did lead to an immediate and significant rise in standards in their first two years of operation. However, yesterday's report underlines the fact that progress in reading has not just stalled but slipped back for two successive years.

There are worrying implications for the Government and parents alike in this. One of the reasons, according to the Ofsted report, was the hastily brought in "guided reading" project pioneered in New Zealand and Australia under which groups of up to six children of a similar reading ability were taken aside by the teacher who listened to them reading while the rest of the class got on with other work.

It was introduced in primary schools without a pilot scheme to test its benefits. Does that sound familiar? It should: one of the main criticisms levied by the former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson in his initial report on this summer's A-level fiasco was that the new A2 units – taken in the second year of the sixth form – had also been introduced without first being tried out.

Ministerial haste to launch education reforms in the early years of this Government was, it has to be admitted, understandable. But, in the same way as Mike Tomlinson described the introduction of the new A and AS-level regime as an "accident waiting to happen", a similar charge may be levelled at the Government if urgent action is not taken to remedy the defects in the its literacy strategy highlighted in the Ofsted report. Another is that teachers – many of whom had been hostile to the use of phonics to teach reading in the past – were not given clear enough guidance on how to introduce the system into their lessons.

On reflection, though, it looks as though the initial success in raising literacy and numeracy standards in primary schools may have had more to do with the emphasis placed by the Government on ensuring that the two subjects had their place at the heart of the school curriculum – and insisting that an hour a day was spent on each of them. Before the two strategies were put in place, the time allocated by different schools to the subjects varied greatly.

The Government's insistence on raising standards also led to a new cultural climate in our schools, whereby it was no longer acceptable for any teacher to claim, for instance, that poverty was an excuse for a child's academic failure. The actual fine detail of the strategies with their instructions to teachers may have been flawed from the beginning.

It is not too late to make changes, build on what has already been achieved and make sure there are no further slippages in standards. However, the message of the past few months for ministers must be crystal clear: cutting corners to make it look as if you are determined to raise standards is no substitute for a more methodical and well thought-out strategy to achieve your aims.