School where pupils fled to the Caribbean defends its security

Teachers at the boarding school from where two teenage sweethearts fled for a Caribbean holiday said today that it had “excellent security” but it was not designed to keep pupils in.

Edward Bunyan and Indira Gainiyeva, both 16, disappeared from £30,000-a-year Stonyhurst College in Lancashire in the early hours of Monday.

They took a taxi to Manchester airport before flying to the Dominican Republic and checking into a five- star beach resort in the capital Puerto Plata.

The college’s second master Matthew Mostyn told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have excellent security, although it needs to be remembered that the prime purpose of that security is to keep intruders out of the building rather than to somehow try to imprison our students.”

He added: “The prime priority at the moment is to do everything we can to support the families and to help the police in their inquiries and to get our two pupils back home and reunited with their families.”