CENTURY Launches Global Wellbeing Research Initiative with COBIS

CENTURY has partnered with the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) to launch the COBIS Global Wellbeing Research Initiative, giving every COBIS member school access to CENTURY’s Wellbeing Tool and a place in the first sector-wide wellbeing benchmark for British international schools.

COBIS represents around 350 member schools and 200 supporting associates across more than 80 countries, so a benchmark built from its network is one of the broadest wellbeing datasets for British international schools. The initiative runs across two survey windows in the 2026-27 academic year: the first from 21st to 25th September 2026, the second in Spring 2027. Results from both windows will be anonymised, pooled and aggregated, with the aim of having comparative insights to present at the COBIS 2027 Conference. For school leaders working across different countries and curricula, it’s a rare chance to see how pupils’ wellbeing compares against a genuinely international peer group, rather than against national data that may not reflect their context.

What the survey measures

The Wellbeing Tool is a five-minute questionnaire pupils complete on any device, built on the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (Renshaw et al., 2015). It reports across five domains: School Connectedness, Academic Efficacy, Joy of Learning, Educational Purpose and Safety. Any safety-related response triggers an immediate alert on the school’s dashboard, so pastoral staff can act on individual concerns as soon as they arise, rather than waiting until the survey window closes. Results are immediately available on each school’s own real-time dashboard, visible at individual, class and year-group level, so pastoral teams can see exactly where support is needed.

The COBIS Global Wellbeing Research Initiative is an exciting expansion from individual schools tracking wellbeing. Each school’s results will feed into the first sector-wide wellbeing benchmark built specifically from British international schools, rather than borrowed from national statistics that were never designed with an international school community in mind. A school in Dubai will be able to see whether a dip in Educational Purpose scores is a pattern local to them or one shared across the network. Additionally, the insight gained can act as an evidence base for sector-wide guidance. The more schools take part, the sharper that picture gets for everyone in it. The data will be anonymised and aggregated throughout the analysis and any future publication so that no individual school or pupil is identifiable.

Joining the initiative

Access to the Wellbeing Tool is complimentary for participating COBIS schools; CENTURY is covering platform, hosting, setup and reporting costs for the initiative.

Setup is quick and easy via a self-service process. Schools nominate a Wellbeing Lead, typically a Head of Pastoral Care, Head of Wellbeing or Data Manager, who receives admin login details and uploads the student details using CENTURY’s standard CSV/Excel template. From there, running the survey takes minutes with no training needed. The same admin account can schedule the Spring 2027 window once the window has been announced.

Registering ahead of the Autumn window

If your school is a COBIS member, the first survey window opens on 21st September, so register now to be onboarded in time. Register your school’s interest here to confirm participation; CENTURY will follow up directly with account setup and onboarding details.

If you’d like to see how the Wellbeing Tool works before committing, or if your school sits outside the COBIS network, you can find more details on CENTURY’s Wellbeing Tool page. Our article Supporting Every Learner: How the CENTURY Wellbeing Tool Helps Schools Understand Their Students covers how it’s used day to day in schools around the world.