PIRLS has been conducted every five years since 2001 and is recognised as the global standard for assessing trends in reading achievement at the fourth grade in primary education. The benchmark was launched by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, an international cooperative of national research institutions, governmental research agencies, scholars, and analysts.
Singapore stands at the top of the ranking, followed by Ireland, Hong Kong, Russia, Northern Ireland and England.
The head of Croatia's National Centre for the External Evaluation of Education (NCVVO), Vinko Filipović, said on Tuesday that the findings are satisfactory for Croatia.
Among 24 EU countries covered by the survey, only Ireland fared better than Croatia.
In Croatia, girls outperform boys, and this is also the case in most of the countries covered by the study.