Background and objectives The objectives of protection of students’ health are closely related to the integrated usefulness of their physical and cognitive development. Our task is to identify the relationship of these two forms of development of schoolchildren during their growing up.

Method A comprehensive, longitudinal survey of 220 students from 1 to 11 classes in 5 Moscow schools was carried out. Each student was surveyed annually to estimate the basic indicators of physical development and indicators of cognitive functions – memory, logical thinking, switching attention.

Results 69.9% of children and adolescents had normal body mass, 15.8% had underweight and 14.3% of children had excess body mass.

It was found that the efficiency of memory in schoolchildren with overweight was by 17.5% less than in children with underweight (p<0.01) and by 16.3% higher than in the normal physical development (p<0.05).

The accuracy of logical thinking was significantly lower in girls with overweight: by 7.5% and 6.0% less than in schoolgirls with underweight and normal body mass, respectively (p<0.05).

The error of switching attention showed significantly higher values in schoolgirls and simultaneously with an excess and deficiency of body mass. The number of errors in them by 21.9% and 22.9% higher than in girls with normal body mass (p<0.01). Boys with underweight had more error values – by 12.0%.

Conclusions The findings show the relationship of the physical and cognitive development of students that must be considered when addressing their health problems in the learning process.