South Africa participated in the Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS) for the first time in the PIRLS 2006. PIRLS was the most complex research conducted on reading literacy in South Africa to date. Internationally most countries participating in PIRLS assessed pupils in one grade and in one language. In South Africa, pupils were assessed in two grades and the children were assessed in all of the official 11 languages. The South African Grade 5 results in the PIRLS2006 were the lowest in the study despite the fact that these were South African Grade 5 students that were being compared with grade 4 students internationally. In particular, socio-economic status and home language are important factors. Initially, South African children start their learning at school in their home language and this practice continues until grade 3. However, in the majority of schools, the language of instruction changes, and in grade 4 more than 80% of South African pupils learn in a second language. The aim of this study is to explore the contexts of high achieving European countries such as the Russian Federation and Italy with a specific focus on the pupils’ home activities, pre-school attendance, home language and compare these factors with those of the South African context and then in relation to the respective pupils’ performance. This study will thereafter explore the extent to which children from different language groups within South Africa differ with respect to home activities, including those associated with reading literacy and pre-school attendance and how these relate to pupils’ achievement in reading literacy. Regression analysis and possibly other multivariate methods will be applied. The national findings indicate that children from English and Afrikaans backgrounds achieved higher scores on the PIRLS tests and that these children are exposed to more home activities associated with reading literacy and most often attend pre-school education in contrast to many children from African language backgrounds. These and other findings are presented in this paper using the PIRLS 2006 national data comprising about 15 000 grade 4 pupils from more than 400 schools.