MŠMT ČR: This year's entrance exams for secondary schools and the maturita

In connection with the current situation surrounding the spread of coronavirus, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports has prepared a plan for how the unified entrance exams for secondary schools, final exams, and the school-leaving exam (maturita) will take place. The date of the above-mentioned exams will depend on when the government's crisis measure on the closure of primary and secondary schools is lifted. The unified entrance exams will take place no sooner than 14 days after students are allowed to return to schools; for the maturita, it will be three weeks. Act No. 135/2020 Coll., on special rules for admission to certain types of education and their completion in the 2019/2020 school year, was passed by the government and the Parliament of the Czech Republic and subsequently signed by the President of the Republic.

The unified entrance exam for secondary schools for the 2020/2021 school year will thus take place no sooner than 14 days from the day personal attendance for education at secondary schools resumes. The specific date, of which there will be only one this year, will then be set by the Ministry of Education. The content and form of the entrance exam are not changing, and the admission criteria set by the school's headteacher likewise remain unchanged. It thus still holds that the exam will also take place in its common part — that is, the unified exam — consisting of a written test in Czech language and literature and a written test in mathematics.

The maturita exam will then take place no sooner than 21 days after secondary schools reopen. This year, the written part in Czech and a foreign language will be dropped from the common part of the maturita. “What's key for the maturita is whether schools reopen by 1 June 2020. If they do, the maturita will take place in a simplified but similar form to every year. In case schools don't reopen by 1 June 2020, the proposal includes a backup solution in the interest of certainty for graduating students,” says the Minister of Education. The newly passed law states that if in-person attendance at secondary schools is not resumed by 1 June, the maturita certificate will be issued based on the student's academic results from their last three report cards. If a student failed in the last year's first half, the school will allow them to take a re-examination before a commission so that, if successful, they too can obtain their maturita certificate.