Raffles Institution (RI) is an independent educational institution in Singapore. Founded in 1823, it is the oldest school in the country. It provides secondary education for boys only from Year 1 to Year 4, and pre-university education for both boys and girls in Year 5 and Year 6. Since 2007, RI and its affiliated school Raffles Girls' School have been offering the six-year Raffles Programme, which allows students to skip the Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level examinations and proceed to take the Singapore-Cambridge GCE A-Level examinations at the end of Year 6. RI is notable for having produced 96 President's Scholars, three presidents, two prime ministers, four speakers of Parliament, several Cabinet ministers and Members of Parliament, as well as many chief executive officers of statutory boards, agencies and state-owned companies. Its alumni body, the Old Rafflesians Association (ORA), includes former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, as well as former Presidents Yusof Ishak, Benjamin Sheares and Wee Kim Wee. RI has one of the highest admission rates to the elite universities of the world such as the Ivy League and Oxbridge. It had the highest number of admissions to the University of Cambridge, with 48 students receiving offers in the 2022 admissions cycle, while 52 were accepted for Oxford and Cambridge combined in 2021, and 77 in 2022 (2nd highest of all schools). History Foundation RI was founded by Stamford Raffles, who proposed the establishment of "the Institution" or "Singapore Institution" at a meeting he convened on 1 April 1823. Raffles wanted to establish a college for the people of Singapore since the founding of the colony, and wrote on 12 January 1823 that a site for a planned college had been selected. His intention was to provide education for the children of local leaders in the new British colony of Singapore as well as the company's employees and others who wished to learn the local languages. Another objective was to "collect the scattered literature and traditions of the country" so that the most important may be published and circulated. Raffles referred to the plan as his "last public act"; by setting up the Institution, he hoped it that it could, through its generations of alumni, serve as "the means of civilising and bettering the conditions of millions" beyond Singapore. Those involved in the plan for the Institution included Reverend Robert Morrison, Sophia Raffles, William Farquhar, and William