You are allowed to teach reading and writing in reception! The point is that good Early Years teachers know the children well & provide a variety of interesting activities, inside and outside, for the children to play with. Through this play they support children to develop good skills to help them become good learners: listening, exploring, investigating, thinking, problem solving etc etc. I see a lot of excellent practice out there! There are also places that are too formal too soon but that is NOT what the statutory framework says.
If a child is keen/ready to read or write a good teacher will support that, not force it! Also it can be done through play and fun..not formally.
My experience is that many parents put a lot of pressure on schools to be 'teaching' reading and writing from the very start. Parents are easily impressed with tidily completed worksheets and equate that to a 'good school'. At the school where I am governor a parent of prem twins, at the meeting for new parents for reception Sept 2013, wanted to know 'when wil the bedlam stop so they they can get on with learning properly' My DD who knows the twins from a playgroup said 'good luck to the teacher trying to get those two to concentrate on anything!' Fortunately the parent got the message that the school believed in play based learning and she has secured places at another , more formal, school.
Can I also say that in Scandanavia ,that people are keen to promote, children are at nurseries for a long time and they are supported to do a lot of the things that you see in a good UK nursery / reception class. We can learn form one another. Also because our written language is so non phonetic, compared to many other languages, it does take longer for the 'rules' to be taught, learned and then applied. I would prefer to see play based / practical learning continue well beyond reception as I think it makes for better understanding and secures concepts and facts more effectively.