A New Zealand Initiative report warns change in literacy education is needed to avoid failing further generations

International assessments show 20 percent of our 15-year-olds don't have the reading competency to enter the workforce, further study or productively participate in society.

The report calls for the Structured Literacy approach which systematically teaches literacy levels from phonetics to text structure.

New Zealand Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich says there are misconceptions around learning to read.

He says reading is a cultural technique that only developed relatively recently in evolution so it doesn't come naturally to us.