And before learning words, learning and practicing phonology. Then, add vocabulary while still practicing phonology. It's insane people and institutions assume one could be understood when speaking a language when its most basic building block is not acquired.

Can I ask what language you're thinking of here? When I was taking classes, the A0-A1 level class was all in the present tense for the full length of the course. We might have touched on past tense in the last lesson and most of the books I've seen for this language (Dutch), structure things as present/future tense first, and then past tense after.

These are my memories of learning English in school as a foreign language. French courses that my wife took recently also had past and future tenses in A1.

Even if it's not the tenses, still schools typically put a lot of focus on grammar and order of words but not even nearly enough into speaking. I have an suspicion that these corses are modelled after native-language programs which rightfully focus on grammar because everyone knows how to speak already. But starting from it is madness.