It's just the latest educational fad, but one that's suited to the lockstep, outcome-testable, target-driven ethos of British education. The simple fact is that all kids are different and learn in different ways, so you need to try out a whole range of strategies to teach them to read. This includes not just the mechanics of reading, but the material and the environment.

Phonics only works for a subset of English, This is Dick, this is Dora. Dick has a rough shoulder. Should Dora laugh? This is the stage at which I actually apologised to Tom, sorry, it's the way the language is.

As for age, let it happen naturally. Tom was reading before he went to school (so was Ali), but that's because he was read TO a lot, and encouraged to look at, not just books, but everything else around- a siuperb learning resource. The very first word he read was a big glowing supermarket sign in the dusk: "Daddy, that says ASDA!"

I've never been a teacher, so I don't know how you'd do it with a class of kids, with Ofsted breathing down your neck. But they'd only be interested in what's in the tick box anyway.

I'm not sure how I learned to read; I just know that my older brother came home from school one day, said "Look, it's easy!", sat me down in a corner and explained it and as far as I remember that was that.