The only appropriate reaction to a Labour announcement on education is to grimace, tear one's hair out, and then lock oneself in a darkened room. How is one supposed to take seriously a Government which claims to be committed to high educational standards but which comes up with the title "Schools forward not back" for its "mini manifesto"?

If only the problem were simply grammar. The illiteracy of Labour's campaign title is, however, symptomatic of a deeper problem. Last week's launch by Tony Blair of its education policies for a putative third term was a typical example of how the Government, to use an American phrase, talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

Mr Blair's aspirations were, as so often, spot on: "A good education system, developing the talents of every pupil, is one built around parent preferences". He spoke, quite rightly, of the importance of "parent power". Indeed, in her first three months as Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly seems to have used the words "parents", "choice" and "diversity" in almost every sentence she has uttered. The Government really does talk the talk, appearing committed to genuine parental choice and happy to break the education establishment's taboos.

But when it comes to walking the walk, the Government has two broken legs. Mr Blair's "big idea" was for every pupil to have "tailored support to tackle their weaknesses and develop strengths", through "small group tuition" – which might even be one-to-one.

With this, the Prime Minister manages both to miss the point completely and to fail to follow the logic of his own words. The basic problem in state schools is not that pupils are taught together in classes which are too large. It is what they are taught, how, and by whom.

Take literacy. Last year, just 56 per cent of 11-year-old boys and 71 per cent of girls in England reached the proper standard for their age in writing. Almost 1.2 million children have failed to meet the required levels since the launch of the National Literacy Strategy in 1998.

The reason is straightforward. All the evidence – not some, but all – shows that the best method for teaching children to read is "structured phonics" (when individual letters are matched to sounds, which are then read together in words), but it was dumped by teacher training colleges in the 1960s. The "new literacy" (more accurately, the new illiteracy) held that traditional learning methods cemented the existing social order. Mass literacy co-existed with, and therefore caused, an objectionable social order. The answer, according to so-called progressives, was to adopt "spontaneous" teaching methods.

Although the National Literacy Strategy includes phonics, it is part of a compromise between the evidence and the educational establishment, and does not come close to doing the job of teaching children to read properly.

"Small group tuition" will mean simply that teachers will push the same flawed methods on smaller groups at a time. The answer is to change what is taught, not the numbers taught it together. But even if Mr Blair had tackled that fundamental problem, he ignores the logic of his position. If children are best stretched alongside two or three others of similar ability, they are even better placed where the entire school is of similar ability; grammar schools, in other words.

Alas, for all the changes that Mr Blair has made to Labour's rhetoric, the idea of selective schools remains a taboo. And so he is reduced to mouthing fine words, but implementing policies which do nothing to tackle the fundamental problems with education.