By Adam Carey
The popular teaching app ABC Reading Eggs has been condemned by leading learning difficulties experts as being more like a video game than an educational tool.
AUSPELD, the association that guides Australian schools on how to teach children with learning difficulties, has cut ABC Reading Eggs from its list of recommended resources for parents and teachers.
Brie Jones and three of her children, Tali (left), Kovi and Naomi. Credit: Eddie Jim
AUSPELD president Mandy Nayton said the app was "entertaining and engaging ... but for people who know a lot about the science of reading, it does miss the mark in terms of high-quality, evidence-based instructions".
Ms Nayton said the program lacked the explicit and sequential instruction many students need when learning to read, particularly those with disabilities such as dyslexia.
The app's owners defended the program, arguing it had never been designed to teach children with learning difficulties how to read.
The disendorsement comes a week after hundreds of thousands of Victorian students returned to six weeks of remote learning.
Ms Nayton said it was likely the use of online learning tools such as Reading Eggs would spike while kids were at home due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The ABC Reading Eggs app was downloaded 29,000 times in Australia last month.
Each session begins with a message: "ABC Reading Eggs is the multi-award winning program where your child will learn to read".
The app carries the ABC brand under a commercial agreement with Blake eLearning, although the national broadcaster has no role in its development or production.
Ms Nayton said the ABC logo would inspire trust among many parents who would not know the ABC has no involvement beyond branding.
"It does enjoy that high level of credibility because people do trust the ABC in the main," she said.
The app remains a recommended teaching tool on Fuse, the Victorian Department of Education and Training’s online portal for learning from home.
Taylor Irish is principal of Chelsea Primary School in Melbourne’s south-east, which is renowned for its success with dyslexic children, and uses a rival British-based app called Nessy that is based on the explicit and repetitive teaching of phonics.
Mr Irish said Reading Eggs was an adequate resource for students who do not have learning difficulties.
"It’s still an OK program if you’ve got your run-of-the-mill kid whose parents want to use the program to help support a child’s reading," Mr Irish said.
Blake eLearning general manager Jose Palmero said Reading Eggs had "successfully helped launch millions of readers into a love of reading and learning" over 30 years.
"The Reading Eggs online program was originally created to help children at home learn to read without much additional assistance," Mr Palmero said.
"Whilst we don’t claim to be the solution for learning difficulties, we have had countless emails from parents of children with learning difficulties thanking us for helping their child."
Brie Jones has four children, two of whom are dyslexic, and says the app failed to improve any of her children’s reading.
Her first son took to the app’s games with their cartoon critters and wacky sound effects, but it didn’t build his interest in reading, Ms Jones said.
"His interest was in making it make funny noises, which it did whenever he got the answers wrong," she said. "I don’t think he learned a single thing while he was doing it."
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