Michael Gove was warned about Megan Stammers's school last month Megan Stammers, who boarded a ferry to France with her maths teacher Jeremy Forrest. Photograph: Sussex police/EPA Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education, was personally warned last month about alleged child protection failures at the school attended by Megan Stammers, the 15-year-old who absconded with her 30-year-old teacher last Thursday and has not been seen since. Gove was contacted by Lucy Duckworth, a former teacher and child protection campaigner, who was researching child safety policies at church schools overseen by the diocese of Chichester, including Bishop Bell school in Eastbourne where Stammers and the maths teacher Jeremy Forrest started a relationship before absconding on a cross-channel ferry to France. Sussex police said they had not found Stammers and Forrest six days after they disappeared and were "considering a number of hypotheses in conjunction with our European colleagues" as a huge online appeal to trace Megan continued. Singers from the girl group the Saturdays were among those who urged the 15-year-old to contact her family after a picture of Megan posing with the band member Frankie Sandford was published. Pupils and teachers posted their own appeals on the school's website. "Dear Megan," read one from "Mrs B." We miss you so much in the lessons. It is not the same ... too quiet. Come back soon. Sussex police are working with Interpol, the French missing persons bureau and other law enforcement agencies in Europe in the search for Stammers and Forrest. The force declined to confirm or deny reports that the pair had been interviewed before they absconded and that one or two of their mobile phones had been seized for analysis. Police said they became aware of the relationship last week, but would not say exactly when. The headmaster, Terry Boatwright, has previously said the school and the local authority were "addressing and investigating concerns that had been raised" when the teacher and pupil fled. Reports suggested staff and pupils became aware that they may have been in a relationship as far back as February on a school trip to Los Angeles when they were seen together. Duckworth said she wrote to Gove about Bishop Bell school and how she "was deeply concerned about the situation of child protection in the diocese of Chichester" after receiving an unhelpful reply to her request for child protection information from Boatwright. "The thrust [of the letter to Gove] was they knowingly allowed a man who had been accused of child abuse to continue working at the school and I said safeguarding of children was not being taken seriously enough," she said. She said she was referring to charges facing Canon Gordon Rideout, until 2010 the chairman of the school's governing body, who is due to appear in court next month charged with 38 child sex offences over an 11-year period from 1962. "Schools have legal responsibilities for safeguarding the children in their care," a spokesman for the Department for Education said. We made this clear in our correspondence with Ms Duckworth. If we were alerted to a specific threat to child safety, clearly we would inform the relevant authority immediately - be that the local safeguarding team or the police. In a statement on Wednesday Boatwright defended his school's child protection record. "Bishop Bell school has a robust safeguarding policy in place, takes safeguarding very seriously and the effectiveness of its safeguarding procedures is rated 'outstanding' by Ofsted," he said. Members of Stammers's family have complained the school did not tell them of concerns about the relationship. The school's published child protection policy lists a chronology of steps to be taken if concern is raised about a pupil's safety. It requires details of the alleged situation to be recorded, direct contact to be made with the child followed by contact with an adult family member. All this should happen before there is any communication with external agencies, such as the police. Phil Johnson, a complainant in three child abuse cases involving Church of England priests from the diocese of Chichester, said the Megan Stammers case and revelations that the school may have known about the situation for months before she absconded with Forrest could be further evidence that "schools in the diocese of Chichester are embedded in a disfunctional culture" with regards to safeguarding children. "It doesn't matter what safeguarding policies are if the people in charge ignore it," Johnson said. It is very clear that where you have traditional clergy trying to defend their position and sitting on the boards of schools, their inclination is to protect the image of the school rather than protect children. There is a long past of people not being listened to. The diocese of Chichester said it had no knowledge of any concern about a relationship between Stammers and Forrest. "We didn't know what internal investigation was happening when the police were alerted to the fact the couple had gone missing," said Lisa Williamson, a spokeswoman for the diocese of Chichester. We were not involved at that stage.