PISA 2000 showed that the gender gap in Finland was one of the biggest among OECD countries. The level of interest and engagement in reading, and the time used for reading outside instructional lessons explained almost totally the difference between boys and girls. After the release of the first PISA results in 2001 the NBE implemented many projects to motivate boys to read at school and encourage them to use more their free time for reading different types of texts. ‘Reading Finland’ was implemented 2001-2005. Around 70 municipalities with many hundred schools participated in the project aiming to develop ‘male pedagogy’, new reading materials and school libraries. ‘Reading adventure’ was a nation-wide campaign to find new methods and material to change reading habits. In the reform of national core curriculum instructional hours in mother tongue and literature were increased, and national standards were defined for reading skills and habits. New materials were produced for teaching and the supply of in-service training was increased. However, in PISA 2009 gender gap was larger than ever before. Engagement and interest in reading and use of students’ free time for reading among boys was lower than earlier. The paper will describe and discuss the reasons behind these results.