Every child belongs to one of six houses and stays in it for their whole time in the school. Brothers and sisters are always in the same house.
The head of house is the point of the arrangement. That one adult follows a child from grade one to grade ten, through both sessions and every form teacher, and is the person a family can go to in year seven who remembers the child in year two. In a school of sixteen hundred, that is the only continuity available, and it is the most valuable thing this school has.
What a house does. Interhouse sport through the year, the athletics day, the Quran competition, the debate and the drama festival. A service project each term, chosen by the house's own student committee, which last year included the beach clean, painting the health centre waiting room and a reading scheme where grade nine children read with grade two children twice a week.
What a house is not. A streaming device. Houses are mixed in every respect and children are allocated to keep them so.
House points exist, are awarded for effort and service rather than for marks, and are announced weekly. The children take them extremely seriously, which is the whole reason they work.