One of the aims for compulsory education is to diminish or alleviate differences in children’s skills existing prior to school entry. However, a growing gender gap in reading development has increasingly been documented. Regrettably, there is scant evidence on whether differences between genders (favouring girls) have their roots in pre-reading skills or whether determining mechanisms are related to factors to do with schooling. We examined the extent to which pre-reading skills assessed in Kindergarten (age 6) predict reading comprehension in Grade 9 (age 15) and, whether the gender difference in reading comprehension can be explained by gender differences in the Kindergarten pre-reading skills. A sample of 1010 Finnish children were assessed on letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, vocabulary, and listening comprehension in Kindergarten and on reading comprehension using PISA Reading tasks in Grade 9. Path models showed that gender as well as Kindergarten pre-reading skills except for phonological awareness were significant predictors of reading comprehension in Grade 9 accounting for 28% of the variance. There were gender differences in most of the measures, but the prediction model estimates were similar for boys and girls except that for boys, letter knowledge was a somewhat stronger predictor of reading comprehension than for girls. The gender effect on reading comprehension was only partially mediated via pre-reading skills. The findings suggest that Kindergarten pre-reading skills are powerful predictors of reading comprehension in Grade 9, but the gender difference found in PISA Reading in Finland does not appear to be pronounced in Kindergarten but rather emerges during the school years.

义务教育的目的之一是减少或减轻入学前儿童技能的差异。但是，越来越多的文献记载了阅读发展中的性别差距越来越大。遗憾的是，没有证据表明性别差异（偏爱女孩）是否源于预阅读技能，或者确定机制是否与上学因素有关。我们研究了幼儿园（6岁）中评估的预阅读技能在多大程度上预测了9年级（15岁）中的阅读理解，以及阅读理解中的性别差异是否可以通过幼儿园预阅读技能中的性别差异来解释。评估了1010名芬兰儿童的字母知识，语音意识，快速命名，词汇，和幼儿园的听力理解以及使用9年级的PISA阅读任务进行阅读理解。路径模型显示，性别和幼儿园的预读技能（语音识别除外）是9年级阅读理解的重要预测指标，占方差的28％ 。在大多数测量中，性别存在差异，但是男孩和女孩的预测模型估计值相似，除了男孩，与男孩相比，字母知识是阅读理解力更强的预测因子。性别对阅读理解的影响仅部分通过预阅读技能来介导。研究结果表明，幼儿园的预阅读能力是9年级阅读理解的有力预测指标。