Deb says, “Last year, I taught a course which some learners were mandated by the job centre to attend. One guy was clearly not happy with the ground rule of turning mobile phones off, so I took him aside to talk to him. Turned out that his son was having surgery that day and the job centre had refused him permission to attend the course on a later date so that he could be with his son while he was put under and brought round. He wanted to keep his phone on in case there was news from the hospital. Needless to say, the official record shows that he attended the course, which he did because we got him a lift to the hospital pronto and he came back voluntarily to do the course the following week.”