The PISA 2009 results showed that in every country and economy there were students achieving only the lowest PISA performance levels, i.e. levels 1a or below. The 8 percent share of low-performers in Finland was one of the smallest among all the participating countries in PISA 2009. Nevertheless, this means that almost five thousand Finnish students finish their basic education with inadequate reading literacy skills. In this paper, the aim is to explain low performance in reading using the Finnish PISA 2009 data and determine the risks for low performance in reading. The data are based on a representative sample of Finnish 15-year-olds, consisting of 5,810 students from 203 schools. The Finnish PISA data were statistically analyzed with a two-level logistic regression model, with purpose to evaluate variables explaining student’s probability for being a low-performer. Because the low-performing girls and boys appeared to differ from each other in terms of several background variables, separate models were fitted for girls and boys. The results showed that for boys, there were clearly more variables explaining low performance than for girls. The results of the study will be discussed in detail in the symposium.