10 September 2021
On Thursday 30 September 2021, more than 58,000 Cognita students, parents and colleagues around the world will celebrate our third Global Be Well Day (GBWD). This annual...
1 September 2021
Today, we were proud to hold a ceremony to celebrate the official opening of our newest school, the Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai, more than 500 years after...
17 August 2021
15,000 students, teachers and education experts from three continents will attend The School of the Future, a global conference for Cognita teams focused on education & technology....
13 August 2021
GCSE, iGCSE and A-Level students across Cognita schools in Spain, Switzerland, Thailand and the UK are celebrating outstanding exam results this week. For our A-Level students, many...
30 July 2021
Fear of public speaking — or glossophobia — is estimated to affect as many as 75 per cent of the population, making it one of the most...
30 July 2021
Amal Hirani, Deputy Principal, Diploma programme, at Southbank International School in the UK suggests why the success of the IB results should make the world sit up and...
22 July 2021
We are delighted to announce that Frank Maassen has been appointed as Group Chief Executive Officer for Cognita. Frank will join us on September 1, 2021, working...
15 July 2021
International Baccalaureate (IB) students in Cognita schools around the world gained fantastic results this year, including several standout performances. Highlights across our IB cohort include: 10 students...
7 July 2021
Even before Covid-19 related social distancing measures, loneliness has been increasing in societies all around the world, particularly among young people in late adolescence and emerging adulthood....
Even before Covid-19 related social distancing measures, loneliness has been increasing in societies all around the world, particularly among young people in late adolescence and emerging adulthood. Yet, it is still unclear what habits and behaviours help lessen the negative effects of loneliness. Cognita is proud to be partnering with Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and her team at the University of Cambridge on an important study to investigate the mental health trajectories of adolescents and adults around the world during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Using a smartphone app, the study will collect both questionnaire data about mood and mental health, as well as anonymised data from the phone about what apps are being used (e.g. social media use, news consumption, gaming), movement and sleep.
During the study itself, which lasts approximately 8 weeks, Cognita and other student participants will receive a notification on their phone to report how they are feeling on a daily basis. In addition, at the beginning of the study and once every week, participants will be given more in-depth questions on their mental and physical health and their behaviours. To probe short-term effects of mood, there will also be small ‘bursts’ of data collection on up to 10 days during the study period, where participants will be asked about mood up to 6 times during a single day.
By tracking individual fluctuations in mental health and linking these to different behavioural and digital profiles, the study will also be able to rapidly identify what behaviours might mitigate the negative effects of loneliness during social distancing for different age groups.
This will have wide-reaching implications and potential translational impact: the longitudinal data collected will help shed light on many crucial questions concerning the effects of social distancing and loneliness on mental health, while the smartphone data will help identify which technology uses may provide benefits, and which may be risk factors for different age groups.
