Maturita
Maturita is a school leaving exam for the upper secondary education (ISCED 3) and it is obligatory for all students of secondary grammar schools, shools of art and vocational schools. Every student is given Maturita Certificate after passing the exam.
School leaving exam consists of two parts – external and internal while in case of foreign and national languages the internal part is divided into written and oral form. Internal part of every subject is obligatory for all students. External part is obligatory for all students only in foreign languages, Slovak language or Hungarian language and Mathematics.
The written form of the internal part means an essay to be written in mother and/or foreign language. The essay themes are announced by NUCEM.
Each school in cooperation with the regional school authority provides the oral form of the internal part of school leaving examination.
School leaving exam is an objective tool for measuring konwledge, skills and general competence of secondary school graduates. School leaving certificate - Maturita Certificate, has a special importance for students, it tells them about their ability to continue in their future careers.
The aim of the external part and internal written part of Maturita is to verify and assess the konwledge and skills of secondary school graduates, which is not possible to verify in the internal oral part sufficiently. Skills and core competencies such as listening comprehension (in foreign languages), reading comprehension, grammar in context etc. are tested. Tests in Mathematics not only verify the knowledge and skills of students but they are also aimed at mathematical literacy.
The structure and content of school leaving exam is based on the Goal Standards for students taking school leaving exam, which can be found in the section Documents. The Goal Standards for students of different school subjects are created and updated by National Institute of Education.
Preparation and implementation of school leaving exam
One of the priorities of National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements is preparation of external part and written form of internal part of school leaving exam assigned by the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic.
In the process of implementation of the external part and written form of internal part of school leaving exam NUCEM cooperates with other institutions which are directly coordinated by the Ministry of Education, especially with the regional school authorities, State School Inspection and the Institute of Information and Prognosis for School System – school computer centres.
Two NUCEM departments as a part of the Division for National measurements participate in planning, preparation and implementation of external part and written form of internal part:
- The Department of Evaluation Tools Development for Higher Secondary Education,
- The Department of Planning and Implementation of Measurements in Higher Secondary Education.
Statistical evaluation of results, score sheets, test results analysis etc. are created by the Department of Evaluation of Measurements Results.
The data about students taking external part and written form of internal part of the school leaving exam are collected every year by electronic form available on https://maturita.svsbb.sk from the second half of October to the end of the first week in November.
Final report – Interpretation of external part and written form of internal part of school leaving exam of every year can be found in the section Documents / Maturita xxxx / Interpretations and Analysis
Contact
maturita@nucem.sk
tel.:+421-2-68 26 03 01 (Head of Division for National Measurements)
History
National Institute for Certified Educational Measurements connects in the preparation of school leaving examinations with the field experience of the Section for Certified Measurements of Educational Outcomes of National Institute for Education.
In the period 2000 - 2004 Slovak monitoring of testing secondary school graduates was implemented entitled MONITOR and in 2004 a Rehearsal Examination of a New Concept of School Leaving Examination was implemented from subjects such as English language, German language and Mathematics in a sample of 51 965 secondary school students.
External and internal written parts of school leaving examination have taken place since 2005 from foreign languages (English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and Italian language) and Mathematics and since 2007 from educational school subjects (Slovak language and literature, Slovak language and Slovak literature, Hungarian language and literature, Ukrainian language and literature).
In 2008, a testing model of on-line school leaving examination was started in selected schools.
In 2011, 60 363 pupils from 763 schools were involved in the external and internal written parts of school leaving examination.
For more information about number of students and schools involved and about the results in each year click here.
New legislation
The organization of school leaving examinations in the school year 2008/2009 regulates Law No. 245/2008 on the education (School Act) and amending certain laws, Regulation of Ministry of Education No. 318/2008 for completing the study at secondary schools and Regulation of Ministry of Education No. 269/2009 on the recognition of compensation the school leaving examination from foreign language.
New legislation brings some changes in the organization of school leaving examinations. One of the changes in this school year is the abolition of all levels in school leaving subjects except foreign languages, they have levels according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages issued by the Council of Europe - B1 (former Level 
and B2 (former level A).
Another change affects the internal oral part of school leaving examination – issues of the internal oral part are not opened to the public. The duration of the internal written part in foreign languages is extended to 60 minutes. Students can take school leaving examination only from the subjects (except educational school subjects), which are listed in the school curriculum and which they studied.
