Completing upper-secondary education (ISCED-3) has been considered an essential part of human life for many decades. Moreover, there has been increasing international stress on decrease drop-out of students from upper-secondary education and an increasing number of students in tertiary education (ET, 2020). That has been a challenge for many countries (ET, 2020) including Czechia. In Czechia, the Matura exam is besides vocational (VET) certificate one of the possible ways of completing upper-secondary education and only way to have the possibility to apply for tertiary education. The Matura exam represents leaving examination at both general (Gymnasiums) and vocational type of upper-secondary schools. For an extended period, the Matura exam was entirely in the gesture of individual schools.

On the one hand, it gave a lot of autonomy and freedom to schools and students. On the other hand, there was a diverse content, and more importantly, the Matura exam's difficulty at different schools. Still, some students did not succeed at the Matura exam, although they had completed all four years of studies. Therefore, in 2011, the new form of Matura exam was introduced (MŠMT, 2009). Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MŠMT) became the prominent leader of the Matura exam, and schools lost a part of their autonomy. Since that, students have to pass the national part of the exam, standard for all upper-secondary school types, in addition to the school part.

Nevertheless, since establishing the national part of Matura in Czechia, its failure rate has been increasing (except for 2013) in all Czech upper-secondary school types and mainly in vocational schools. Approximately 3.4% of students did not pass the Matura exam within three years after their studies and left the educational system with unfinished secondary education (Trhlíková, 2018). Increasing failure rate, a various quality of upper-secondary schools and VET schools falling behind the Gymnasiums have caused a significant challenge for both Czech education and society. However, relatively little attention has been paid to research on how VET students make their educational decision-making, leading to repeated failure at the Matura exam. That is why our main research question is: What characterizes educational decision-making process of repeatedly unsuccessful VET graduates on the way to Matura exam? The partial research question is then: What aspects and obstacles enter this decision-making process? 

In this contribution, we consider educational decision-making process as a part of the concept of the career decision-making when several educational alternatives are considered, and one of them is chosen (Gati & Tal, 2008; Kulcsárc et al., 2020). We understand students' decision-making process due to learning experiences (Krumboltz et al., 1976; Lent & Brown, 2013), and a process involving circumscription and compromise (Gottfredson, 1981). Previous research focuses mainly on students' future career decision-making. Based on the literature and theories, there has been suggested several aspects of the career decision-making process (those include f. e. self-exploration, environment exploration, commitment to studies, orientation to choice) (Gati & Asher, 2001; Germeijs & Verschueren, 2006; Harren, 1979; Van Esbroeck et al., 2005). But not much attention has educational research paid on the characteristics of students' decision-making as such (Galotti, 2006). Therefore, we were inspired by Scott and Bruce (1995) that suggested five decision-making styles introduced based on their research with military officers. Those aspects are rational, intuitive, dependent, avoidant, spontaneous. We see a considerable potential for the educational field in this typology. Based on mentioned, a review of the students' decision-making literature reveals a need for empirical studies investigating the characteristics and styles of the educational decision-making process leading to upper secondary school graduation, which we consider a significant step to the students' future career and lifepaths.

The purpose of the contribution is to investigate and understand the characteristics of the educational decision-making process of repeatedly unsuccessful VET graduates to complete their upper secondary education by the Matura exam. The partial goal is to describe the motivations and obstacles that enter this process at each passing the Matura exam. A qualitative approach to data collection helped to get a more in-depth insight into the problematic. During spring and fall semester 2020, 23 in-depth interviews were realized with students from VET types of secondary schools that failed at the Matura exam in 2018 and 2019 for the first time and failed at their second attempt. Comparable to the essential aspects of Germeijs and Verschueren (2006), we investigated several aspects of the educational decision-making process: (1) Choice actualization (Why did students decide to enter the studied program and how did they feel during the first year at school?). (2) Commitment to the chosen study during all four years reported by the students (How do students self-evaluate their abilities and skill?). (3) Academic adjustment during the last year in upper secondary education as reported by the students (How do students refer to their success in coping with educational demands? How did students choose subjects for leaving exams?). (4) The relationship with family, peers and teachers (How did students gain motivation and influence for the decision-making process?). (5) Barriers on the way to successful passing Matura exam (How did students face the barriers and what decisions did lead to overcoming them in the path to successful graduation?). We expected that these five aspects are essential for characterizing the decision-making process leading to finishing upper secondary education by passing the Matura exam. After collecting all face-to-face and online (due to the pandemic situation) interviews, we have transcribed them and uploaded in the Atlas.ti (data corpus consisted of 620 pages). In Atlas.ti environment, we have firstly open coded all interviews to orientate in the discussed topic; after that, we worked with network views that allowed us to sort and visualized created coded into categories. As a basis for the categories were five aspects of educational decision-making presented above.

One of the main findings of this contribution is that educational decision-making of VET students from our sample is characterized by inadequate self-evaluation and cognitive and personal biases that influence their decision-making styles which described Scott and Bruce (1995). Decisions which students made during their studies at upper-secondary VET school (e.g. choice of studied programme, choice of subjects for Matura exam, the decision on the way of preparation for Matura exam) are characterized by an individually perceived choice of a path of least resistance and least afford. In reality, these choices has usually led to the failure. But respondents usually do not see the problem in their decision-making and look especially outside for reasons for repeated failure rather than in their own decision-making process. Therefore, students from our sample experience more obstacles (from both national and school level) to complete upper-secondary education than space for individual decision-making that would help them overcome barriers during the studies and pass the Matura exam. Their explanation of the failure is often argued by the feeling of disadvantage from the Gymnasium students and the conviction that there are less prepared for the Matura exam's national part than their Gymnasium peers (as they predominantly fail from this part of Matura exam). Given the large numbers of students who interrupt or fail to complete study programs in upper secondary education, it is crucial to identify possible risk factors for low academic achievement. Therefore our research focused on these risk factors as we analysed aspects of their decision-making which led them to the (un)successful final exam. This research contributes to partial knowledge about students' perspective of their failure. Finally, the study contributes to the broader international discussion about the experience with one concrete possible way of completion the vocational upper secondary education.

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