| Description |
Failure of the Matura exam is a growing problem in the Czech Republic. Since the introduction of the so-called State Matura in 2013, the net failure rate ranges from 19.3% in 2011 to 24.8% in 2018 for first-attempt to graduate, and in the range of 44.8% (2012) to 59.5%. (2016) for corrective and replacement attepts (CZVV, 2020). The unsuccessful graduate has the opportunity to repeat the part of the graduation exam in which he failed at most twice, within five years from the first attempt. However, in repeated attempts, unsuccessful graduates lose virtually all institutional support and prepare themselves. From the above, it is clear that more than half of those who take the test fail repeated experiments. The key to understanding the success or failure of the Matura exam is therefore to know what the preparation for the repeated exam looks like. The current empirical knowledge works with the thesis that "successful students use more strategies than unsuccessful ones" and "that they use different strategies than unsuccessful students" (Vlčková, 2018, p. 85). Nevertheless, it is difficult to clearly demonstrate that learning strategies and the degree of self-management in the learning process increase the effectiveness of learning (Zimmerman, 1986; Vlčková & Bradová, 2014). In preparation for the next exam, unsuccessful graduates find themselves in a unique situation where their chances of a repeat exam depend on their ability to use an adequate learning strategy independently and in a self-controlled manner. Therefore, we ask ourselves the following questions: How and to what extent and depth are the graduates able to manage or change their learning strategy in preparation for the remedial exam? To what extent are they still learning in the same way as on the first failed attempt with the expectation of a better result? The paper is based on the analysis of narrative interviews with 15 informants - first graduates from 2019, who in their proper and first corrective or replacement attempt failed the graduation exam in any part or parts. Informants studied, and subsequently held the school-leaving examination at various types of secondary schools (grammar schools, lyceums, secondary vocational schools, post-graduate school-leaving studies) in the Czech Republic. Part of the narration is also a reflection of the graduate's own preparation in time between individual corrective attempts. It was these parts that were used in the thematic coding and analysis of interviews. The narratives of the respondents were thematically coded, taking into account the timeline divided according to the individual attempts to pass the school-leaving examination. Based on the analysis, information was obtained about their preparation for the Matura exam in the time before the first attempt (regular, spring term in 2019), before the second attempt (the first corrective term, which took place in the autumn term in 2019) and before the third attempt (the second correction date, which took place for all in the spring term in 2020). Based on them, it is possible to trace whether and how their preparation changed over time, to what extent these changes were controlled or rather elected on an ad hoc basis. Inductively, we create inductive categorization of strategies by confronting available taxonomies of learning strategies through the approaches mentioned by graduates (eg returns to high school materials, repeated solutions of model test tasks, seeking support for peers, tutoring, etc.).
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