Ammanford stabbing: Police can check school bags, minister says

“There’s been a culture shift and what I’m seeing is a whole range of societal problems are now playing out in schools and schools are having to do things that they didn’t have to before,” she told Radio Wales Breakfast.

“I’m hearing a lot from schools about behavioural issues [and] we are seeing more and more young people with complex mental health issues.

“One of the things we are doing as a government is I’m bringing together all partners in Wales later this year – as soon as we can – to have a behaviour summit where we’re going to look at these issues… I want that to be really action focussed, so we come out with an action plan.”

Following the verdict, Fiona Elias – one of the teachers who was attacked at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in April 2024 – said she wanted to meet the local authority and Welsh government to make sure no one else went through “the nightmare I have endured”.

Neagle said: “I’ve already met with Fiona Elias, I’ve also visited the school on two occasions. I’ve been really clear that I want to do everything that I can to support the school who’ve been through this terrible time, but it is also obviously important that we learn lessons now from what happened.

“Now that the trial is over, we need to understand what happened on the run-up to this case and we are talking with the local authority about how we best learn the lesson from that.”

During the trial, it was revealed that the teenager responsible for the attack regularly took a knife to school, until her father began checking her bag each morning.