A GROUP of foreign students got more than they bargained for on a field trip.

The group, many of them believed to have been of Arabic or Asian origin, were in the Seal Sands area as part of an engineering visit, earlier this week. They were minding their own business when they were stopped by police officers, who had been alerted by security guards at a chemical plant.

The guards thought the minibus might have been a suspicious vehicle. But when it was stopped by police, they found its occupants were overseas engineering students from a Teesside training college.

A spokeswoman for Cleveland Police said: "After stopping the bus and talking to the occupants, police soon discovered they were bona fide students on a field trip.

"The security patrol did exactly the right thing in alerting the police."

The students were all on placements at the Middlesbrough-based TTE Management. Nobody from TTE Management was available for comment last night.