Commenting after her appearance before the Senedd's Children, Young People and Education Committee, in which she expressed concerns about the implications of the Welsh Language and Education Bill, Laura Doel, national secretary at NAHT Cymru, said:

“While we support the aspirations of this Bill, we have seen little evidence that the Welsh Government will deliver the funding schools need to meet them – and we doubt the capacity exists to offer the necessary language training, even if the money was available.

“Schools already embrace the Welsh language in a variety of ways, but the support is simply not there to scale this up in certain areas.

"Schools in Wales are struggling just to keep their head above water when it comes to core funding and the workload involved in meeting existing statutory requirements, let alone further legislation on anything in addition. When we still have significant challenges around numeracy and literacy across Wales, we need to ensure that any new education legislation, whether that be on the Welsh language or anything else, takes into account what schools are already having to contend with. Nothing is more important than equipping learners with the basics.

“When education unions’ agreed to end our industrial action last year, one of the conditions was that the Welsh Government would introduce a tool to assess the workload impact of new legislation on schools – but work to develop this tool is still ongoing.

“This Bill should never have seen the light of day before a comprehensive assessment to understand the impact of its provisions on the workload of school teachers and leaders. Until this changes, we cannot begin to consider throwing our weight behind it, regardless of the intentions underpinning it.”