Cognition

New offshore contract augers well for ongoing international success of educational organisation

NEW ZEALAND, Thursday, 26 October 2006: Cognition Consulting Limited, an exciting new entity focused largely on international education consulting projects, has continued to expand its operations in the Middle East with a new school support project in Dammam, a city in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Des Hammond, Chief Executive of Multi Serve and Chairman of Cognition Consulting, says the Saudi contract involves the provision of support to teachers and school leadership for the Al Bassam Group, a significant private education provider in the region.

“This is an important and powerful contract, given that the consulting support our team on the ground is providing has the potential to facilitate an improvement in the long term quality of life for children in the region,” he says.

Executive Director Middle East for Cognition Consulting, John Tait, and Education Consultant, Andy Worrall, are the Cognition employees involved in the contract. They are initially working in the Boys Section of Al-Bassam Private School over the next nine months with Yousif Al-Bassam, the owner of the Al-Bassam Schools and Operator of Abu Baker Asedeeq Independent School in Doha, Qatar.

It was the excellent work of the Cognition consultant team in Abu Baker Asedeeq School over the 2005-06 school year that prompted Mr Al-Bassam to consider using Cognition Consulting to provide support for his education vision for his own schools in Dammam, as well as his commitment to education reform in a wider context. Both companies are confident that this partnership will enhance business opportunities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
 
“I’m looking forward to seeing the results in the Al-Bassam School of the ideas which Cognition can bring to our teachers and senior staff for the benefit of our pupils and am particularly interested in the influence that the partnership with Cognition might have on the wider school sector in the Eastern Province,” says Mr Al-Bassam.

This venture into Saudi Arabia represents a new and challenging direction for Cognition Consulting. The company has swiftly capitalised on its very successful operations in Qatar in order to create additional opportunities and anticipates that this will be the beginning of even wider operations in Saudi Arabia.

“It’s an exciting project on a number of levels, specifically because it is building on a successful school that has progressive ideas and is keen to be at the leading edge of education in Saudi Arabia,” says John Tait.

“It’s likely that there will be widespread interest from education officials and other schools in the quality of the practices and programmes that develop in Al-Bassam School and these will provide a working model for school development in the state education sector,” he adds.  

Cognition Consulting is already build upon the success enjoyed by its parent shareholder, Multi Serve Education Trust, which since its inception in 1989 has become New Zealand’s leading independent education services provider and exporter.

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About Cognition Consulting: Cognition Consulting provides education consulting services to meet individual client needs in markets around the world.  It was launched in August 2006 as a subsidiary company of Multi Serve Education Trust, which has been in operation since 1989 and functions as a Charitable Trust. The consulting business operations of Multi Serve will be assigned or subcontracted to Cognition Consulting which will become New Zealand’s largest independent supplier of consulting services to the global education community including new school establishment projects, policy development and review, professional development, coaching and mentoring, evaluation and development, executive recruitment and financial consulting.  Cognition Consulting’s services assist governments and educators to undertake significant educational reform projects and improve educational outcomes.
 
For further information, please contact:
Kelly Bennett, TBWA\PR, 09 366 6266 or 021 380 035
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