Secondary analyses of PIRLS-2006 results (in Russia) showed significant differences between the best performing schools and the schools with low level of performance. This research is a follow-up study of PIRLS-2006 and has been conducted in 10 schools that have participated in PIRLS-2006 and that proved to have PIRLS reading achievement scores either significantly higher or significantly lower than the Russian average. Objective of this exploratory study was to clarify what school depended factors influence student’s reading competency. Our research project set out to answer the following questions: * Are there any school depended factors that help successful schools to produce better results? * What factors caused low results of students in some schools? * What could be the strategy of reading competency improvement? The conceptual framework we used includes: * model of effective schools (Mortimore Peter, 1998). * Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development (Vigotsky L.S., 1984). Effective schools’ model provided us with main characteristics of schools to study in the context of students’ learning achievements. The idea of the zone of proximal development was used to monitor students' progress in solving complex reading problems. In this research a case study approach has been applied, comprising of a comprehensive study of 10 schools that had participated in PIRLS-2006 (and that had PIRLS scores that were notably higher, in line with, or significantly lower than the country’s average). The geography of study: the city of Moscow, Moscow province and neighboring province. It includes a study of both non-school factors (such as family socio-economic background, pre-school preparation) and in-school factors (including overall school climate, teaching strategies (especially for reading competencies)). In each of the ten schools, the following steps are included in the research approach: Testing of students from the cohort participated in PIRLS-2006 (being in 6th grade in 2008). The test included items from PIRLS-2006 as well as more challenging problems based on PIRLS;Survey of students (about their common activities in classroom), parents of the students (children's preparedness to enter school) and interview of teachers and administrators (strategies aimed at working with both advanced and weak students);Observation of classrooms with the focus on the strategies to develop reading competence.The study shows that the role of in-school factors could be quite high. The most significant factors are: overall school climate as well as teaching strategies aimed at fostering reading literacy.