Royal Belfast Academical Institution

The Royal Belfast Academical Institution, known to everyone as Inst, is a boys' grammar school on College Square East, in the middle of Belfast. It has over a thousand boys on the main site and more than two hundred at its preparatory department, Inchmarlo, which sits on a separate campus off the Malone Road. About a hundred and fifty new boys arrive each year. Entry at Year 8 is through the SEAG assessment.

It was chartered in 1810 and took its first pupils in 1814, with the Royal title granted by William IV in 1831. Two traditions started in the same couple of years in the 1920s and both survive: the school song was written in 1925, when boys were first required to wear the yellow and black quartered caps, and the house system followed in 1926. The six houses are named after Old Instonians and school figures, Dill, Kelvin, Larmor, Pirrie, Jones and Stevenson. The reason the then principal gave for setting them up is so that boys should not feel like insignificant individuals in a very large single community.

The houses are the pastoral system, not just a sports league. Each has a senior housemaster and a named tutor for every year from Year 8 to Year 13, so a boy's tutor, his house and his prefects are the same small vertical group for seven years. Year 8 is handled carefully and incorporates: an induction meeting in June, then the new boys come in the day before term starts with the campus to themselves; a residential trip; a coffee afternoon where they tell their parents about it; and a Christmas dinner with their tutors and their Year 14 mentors. Sport happens across town, on grounds in south Belfast.