Ammanford stabbing: Behaviour issues raised before attack

A deputy head teacher at a school where two teachers and a pupil were stabbed wrote to the Welsh government to express concerns about behaviour three months before the attack.

Ceri Myers exchanged seven emails with government, with the last sent on the morning of the attack at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in Carmarthenshire last April.

A 14-year-old girl is due to be sentenced on 28 April after being found guilty of attempted murder.

Education Secretary Lynne Neagle said violence towards teachers or staff was “completely unacceptable” and the Welsh government had been “focusing really strongly on tackling issues of poor behaviour”.

Mr Myers resigned after last April’s attack which left teachers Fiona Elias and Liz Hopkin, as well as a pupil, in hospital.

“You never go into a school thinking that would happen,” he told S4C’s current affairs programme Y Byd ar Bedwar.

“But I believe that there were warning signs for every school in Wales that something like this was going to happen.”

Mr Myers, who is now working at an academy in London where he oversees pupil safety and behaviour, said the first time he was assaulted it was “deemed as a once in a career incident”, but he’s had “five or six” in the last academic year.

A Freedom of Information request to Ysgol Dyffryn Aman revealed there were four incidents of weapons being taken on to school premises recorded during the 2023/2024 academic year, with two pupils permanently excluded.

During the trial of the pupil, it emerged a knife was found in her bag in September 2023, resulting in a fixed-term exclusion.

Welsh government guidance states the use, or threatened use, of an offensive weapon, can be considered an exceptional circumstance where the learner can be permanently excluded.

Mr Myers said: “On more than one occasion, as a school we had the conversation with the local authority to explain someone was carrying a knife and this is what we would like to do… the response from the local authority was ‘no, we are not going to support you excluding that person permanently’.”

In a joint statement, Carmarthenshire County Council and Ysgol Dyffryn Aman said they were “not aware of incidents where the school and local authority have been working against each other or in disagreement”.

The education minister said all schools should be “safe places” and have “behaviour policies in place which are consistently implemented”.

“We’ve got our behaviour summit coming up where we’re going to have an action focused look at what we need to do,” Neagle said.

“We’re developing a behaviour toolkit for schools to help schools to manage challenging behaviour [and] we also have strong guidance in place on what can be reasons for exclusion and, currently, having a knife in school can be a reason for automatic exclusion.”