Anyone who relies on primary schools in England to teach their kids basic literacy and numeracy is either hopelessly naive or very stupid. If you don't teach them how to read/write/times tables yourself then they will rapidly find themselves 2-3 years behind their European peers.
While I'm sure there are some decent primary school teachers, I have yet to meet one. Most of the teachers our kids had in primary school (2000-2009) couldn't spell themselves and in terms of maths - well all I can assume is that its optional in primary teacher training because I'd class several of them as functionally innumerate. Oh and this was in a school classed as above average in Ofsted reports in a fairly wealthy area.
The standard in secondary schools is much better but by the time the kids have been subjected to 7 years of English primary education most of them require remedial classes to bring them anywhere close to where they should be for their age group. This has a serious knock-on effect on English universities, especially in engineering courses as 3 years is considered inadequate by most countries for engineering competence - and that's assuming the undergrads can actually do the required maths in year 1, which most can't. Hence you end up with extremely poor engineering graduates who are typically unable to undertake the work required of them by employers for anything up to 2 years after graduation.