Schools say they are having no trouble meeting the government's decree that they teach reading, writing and maths for an hour a day each on average.
And many have already adopted the government's favoured approach to reading - structured literacy which focuses on learning the sounds of letters.
The OECD's Pisa study shows 21 percent of New Zealand 15-year-olds are poor readers and 29 percent are bad at maths.
Education correspondent John Gerritsen reports.
