How to keep Debian internal clock synchronized (with NTP servers)?

I have a home server which runs an up to date Debian 7.5 (wheezy) installation. I just discovered that the server has its internal clock set to ± 3 minutes *in the future*. I knew that I could use NTP to synchronize Debian (and the motherboard internal clock) with NTP, so I installed NTP by following the steps described in the french Debian Wiki (the English page is less detailed). I used the following command to sync the internal clock:

ntpdate -B -q 192.168.0.254

The clock was successfully adjusted. But this is a temporary solution, so I installed the NTP daemon and added a local server in the /etc/ntp.conf file:

# pool.ntp.org maps to about 1000 low-stratum NTP servers.  Your server will
# pick a different set every time it starts up.  Please consider joining the
# pool: 

# added
server 192.168.0.254

server 0.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 1.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 2.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 3.debian.pool.ntp.org iburst

Is it the right solution? In fact I was surprised to find that the ntp daemon wasn't already installed. I'm wondering if the default installation of Debian installs a daemon to keep the internal clock synchronized. Are all the Debian installations time-shifting until their admins install ntpd? Please tell me that the ntp daemon won't be useless because Debian has a built-in synchronization mechanism.