14 ABSTRACT OF THE CSI ANNUAL REPORT 2014/2015 | Draft translation • There is an increasing number of employers or businesses who are interested in the realization of practical training at their workplaces. Cooperation with businesses on the local level serves, among other things, as a motivating factor and it makes practical training meaningful and more attractive to pupils. Other motivating factors include grants awarded for good school grades provided by schools (15.5% subjects), founders of schools (16.3%) and some employers. In 59.9% of the cases (inspected schools), the practical training took place at a local business at least partly, in 10.2% of the inspected subjects, the whole of the practical training was facilitated by local businesses. • The quality of provided school counselling services improved, especially in the availability of specialists for school counselling and prevention of risky behaviour. There also was an increase in the number of educational counsellors who have completed specialized studies. In 85.7% cases of secondary schools, an educational advisor was appointed and in 80.6% of the inspected secondary schools, there was a school prevention specialist appointed. Most educational advisors (61%) were graduates of a specialized study programmes.• Successful implementation of a uniform final exam.Negative Findings • The content of some of the framework educational programmes does not match the current level of technological development and equipment of schools. These programmes then cannot perform its function of basic documents which outline the strategies of individual schools. • As far as the teaching staff is concerned, schools are faced with restrictions on the employment of experts for teaching vocational or technical subjects. • There is a high number of secondary schools where very similar or the same specializations are taught. This continuously results in significantly higher offer of places than is the demand. The structure of the secondary education does not fully correspond with the needs of the labour market. • Most secondary schools prefer quantity over quality when accepting new students. The main aim being filling classes with a corresponding number of pupils regardless of their academic competences and motivation, which is then negatively reflected in their school results and later particularly in success in the final examinations. This results in the fact that many pupils do not reach either the planned level of education or the desired professional qualification. There were pupils in secondary education, who after successful completion of three years of a particular secondary school, failed the school-leaving examinations (in most cases the state part of the maturita exam). These students were subsequently - in compliance with the law - admitted into senior year of the secondary school again and in 2014/2015 underwent further unsuccessful attempts at passing the graduation exam. It is evident that this is not an exceptional failure, but the result of lacking academic competences – a fact that should have been detected during the admission process into that particular school. Limits for re-sitting the final exam should be strictly set because the current situation allows some students to be for the third time admitted into the senior year of the school. The mentioned students will start the third series of attempts at passing the graduation exam next year.• Low success rate of students in the didactic test of mathematics in the state school-leaving examinations corresponds with the findings of the Czech School Inspectorate during the lessons. Pupils often demonstrate deficiency in knowledge and mathematical skills, which is a limiting factor not only in mathematics, but also in science and technical subjects where the use of mathematical tools is an essential prerequisite for solving the tasks successfully. A failure rate for the school-leaving exam in mathematics was 23.9%. In the long term, pupils experience difficulty in passing the math didactic test, especially in post-secondary education where the percentage of failed students increased from 53% to 60.1%. In all tests of the school-leaving examinations pupils from post-secondary education achieve results twice as worse than the results of students in other fields of vocational education. In the school part of the final exam, however, students of post secondary education demonstrate better results by 0.7% than pupils from similar type of secondary education.