A WELSH teachers’ union has been condemned for alleging that an influx of English “incomers” will endanger the education of local children.

UCAC, the union for Welsh teachers, is fighting a Unitary Development Plan in Ceredigion, west Wales, which proposes more than 6,000 new houses. It has claimed that “incomers will endanger the language and change the communities of the schools”.

Moelwen Gwyndaf, one of the union’s field officers, said: “Incomers often arrive and don’t realise how Welsh-speaking it is here. It comes as a bit of a shock and causes problems for the teachers when they come to school and can’t speak Welsh. This plan endangers the future of the language.”

But Nick Bourne, leader of the Welsh Conservative party, said: “The more terms such as ‘incomers’ are used to describe those individuals and families who wish to settle in Wales, the more harm is done to the image of Wales as a whole.”

In the county, 71 of the 76 primary schools and two of the seven secondary schools are Welsh-speaking.

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has urged the Welsh Assembly to hold an urgent inquiry into the effects of inward migration on the Welsh language .

It has also urged the assembly to develop policies to strengthen the language, but also to assure those people living in the British Isles and Europe of the right to freedom of movement. Dr Mashuq Ally, head of CRE Wales, said: “Defending a language and culture is not synonymous with xenophobia or racism, but more often than not, the language used by some Welsh-language supporters recently has contributed to this myth.”

This year, school pupils in Ceredigion scored the highest GCSE results, with 64 per cent gaining five or more A* to Cs, and the best A-level marks in Wales. with a point score of 21.