ON THE ground floor of NorthLight School is a room rigged to look like a hotel room.

There, its hospitality course students practise their housekeeping skills, including changing bedsheets, cleaning toilets and vacuuming the floor.

NorthLight is the latest school to get into training people for jobs in the hospitality sector. It provides vocational training for students who have failed the Primary School Leaving Examination.

Last week, the Institute of Technical Education (College West) announced its plans to have hotel rooms, restaurants and a tourist centre on campus.

At NorthLight, students go from cleaning their make-believe hotel room to taking on real suites.

The practical skills part of their training sets them to work in the housekeeping department of the Golden Orientus Resort, a new hotel near Jalan Kayu, every Tuesday morning.

They work in groups of four to clean the 40 to 50 rooms in the four hours they spend there.

Fourth-year student Lim Qin Jie, 17, hopes to work her way up in the hospitality industry to become a manager.

For now, she said she felt a sense of satisfaction after having cleaned a room.

Her classmate, Donna Kate Miranda, 21, said she preferred making beds to cleaning toilets, but takes dirty bathrooms in stride.

'I still have to wash them because it's part of my job,' she said.

Besides building good work attitude and pride in a job well done, NorthLight believes in improving its students' language skills.

The school's principal, Mrs Chua Yen Ching, said: 'No matter what jobs they end up with, it's important that they communicate well with people. Many of our students are not able to speak very well yet.'

To this end, the school has pumped $30,000 into its New Media Centre, which has equipment for deejaying and hosting radio shows and interviews.

All its students will also be put through an infocomm technology course, during which they will learn about blogging and how to record, edit and upload soundbites on the Internet.

'The new media technologies are almost second nature to the students. It is effective to use these tools because they are interested,' said Mrs Chua.

Fazlie Ibrahim, 15, said he found the DJ-training class tough going at first, but has since overcome being tongue-tied.

He said: 'I had to write on a piece of paper what I wanted to say and keep on rehearsing it at home. Now I'm getting better at it.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 27, 2008