Description: Studies carried out in variety of countries demonstrate that social and family background has great influence on school performance, which was shown also in Slovenia. Those studies have shown that students who come from deprivileged social and family background tend to achieve lower scores and are less successful in school. One of the roles of the school is to lower the gap between students, coming from different environments. In the article we try to identify the teaching practices in reading and its characteristics which are successful in leveling that gap between the students. In the article we compare two educational systems - Slovenia and Sweden, where students achieved the best scores in reading literacy. Both countries participated in PIRLS 2001. Different multivariate methods (factor analyses, regression analyses) will be used to identify the successful teaching practices in leveling the gap between students.