I learned to read in the early 1950s, and so did all my classmates. We never even heard about a ‘system,’ we just learned to ‘sound it out.’ One or two who were ‘slow’ had trouble and probably never got good at it, but then we’re talking 2 out of 32 kids.
My wife’s young nephew was reading each early Harry Potter book as it came out along with many other books.
He said his friends were oddities as nearly everyone else at his school never read ANY books. He also did the video games, got a cell phone and used a desktop to search the internet. But he was a reader, too. Currently works doing software support for companies.
My Elementary school had six grades in three classrooms, doing a lot of the school work twice helped me a lot.