International Baccalaureate and soft skills: a bridge between holistic education and artificial intelligence
Integrating the Human and the Technological in 21st-Century Education
The holistic development of students requires much more than good grades. Education must cultivate not only the mind but also character, empathy, and adaptability. In this context, the International Baccalaureate (IB)—recognized for its focus on integral formation and global citizenship—has become a model that balances cognitive, ethical, and emotional dimensions.
However, until recently, measuring and accompanying the development of these dimensions was a challenge. How can curiosity, empathy, or emotional balance be evaluated objectively? How can the IB profile attributes be translated into observable and trainable competencies?
The answer is beginning to emerge with the help of artificial intelligence.
A pioneering project: Irabia-Izaga and Human AI
The Irabia-Izaga School (Pamplona) has taken an innovative step by integrating Human AI, an artificial intelligence platform designed to measure and enhance socio-emotional competencies (SES) through natural language analysis.
The project, presented by teacher Fernando García at the II International DocencIA Congress, was developed in collaboration with the Human AI team. Its objective was to align the ten attributes of the International Baccalaureate profile—inquiring, knowledgeable, thinking, communicative, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-taking, balanced, and reflective—with the 35 socio-emotional competencies derived from the OCEAN model (the “Big Five” of personality).
Through this theoretical and practical correspondence, a coherent educational framework is achieved between the IB principles and OECD scientific evidence on the role of soft skills in academic and personal success.
From attributes to competencies
The study identified significant correspondences between the IB profile attributes and SES. For example:
- Inquiring relates to open-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, and engagement with others.
- Communicative aligns with empathy, assertiveness, collaboration, and sociability.
- Principled connects with sense of duty, responsibility, and honesty.
- Risk-taking relates to emotional regulation and action-seeking.
- Balanced corresponds to emotional stability and organization.
- Reflective aligns with deliberation and self-awareness.
These associations are not only theoretically valuable but also make it possible to operationalize students’ socio-emotional development with objective data. Human AI generates individual and group reports that help tutors identify strengths, areas for improvement, and potential lines of action. In addition, it includes a pedagogical recommender that translates results into personalized plans to be used in tutoring or in the classroom.
AI at the service of human guidance
The most interesting aspect of this experience is the balance between technology and humanity. As Fernando García emphasized, “the tool does not replace the tutor; it expands their perspective.” Human AI provides a rapid, objective, and contextual evaluation based on texts written by the students themselves, but interpretation and support remain deeply human.
The Irabia-Izaga model reinforces the four dimensions of its educational framework—physical, cognitive, socio-emotional, and spiritual—demonstrating that artificial intelligence can be an ethical ally to personalize education without dehumanizing it.
A benchmark for holistic education
The integration of the International Baccalaureate with AI-based socio-emotional assessment represents a pioneering educational model, where IB values find a measurable and formative counterpart in 21st-century soft skills.
The project confirms what scientific research indicates: socio-emotional competencies—such as empathy, responsibility, self-control, and curiosity—are trainable, measurable, and predictive of well-being and academic success.
Human AI translates this evidence into educational practice, allowing each student to better understand their strengths, each tutor to have objective data, and each educational center to build a learning culture that is more human, more conscious, and evidence-based.
“Behind every model of artificial intelligence there must be an educational intention: to better understand people in order to help them develop fully.”
Fernando García, teacher at Irabia-Izaga
