Czech secondary school students are preparing for the final/exit exam, which in our case, is the Matura exam, during their study. Matura is considered important in the life span because it allows students to study at university or gives opportunity to find an appropriate job in the labour market. If an examinee does not pass the Matura exit exam, he/she officially completed only the primary level of education, regardless of the completed four years of study at secondary school. The purpose of this exit exam is evaluation of student's knowledge of the learned curriculum. The exit exam has two parts. The state guarantees the first common part, consisting of two exams: (1) Czech language and (2) second language or mathematics. The second part depends on the characteristics of the school and its programs. Thus, the Matura exam places demand on students and their learning because the exam is complex and comprehensive, and it has an essential meaning in the social context.

Secondary school education is often described as directed and influenced by teachers who test students. The tests are usually partial from the thematic unit (Seli et al., 2020). Students have many grades, showing how (un)prepared they were for the test. If they fail, they can better prepare for the new test, and their final grade can be fixed. This system does not work for the Matura exit exam. The grade from this exam is based on their one-try performance, and they cannot influence the grade in another way. This complex exam requires long-term, systematic, and independent preparation. In order to pass this exam, students must be aware of their goals and motivation, which is a process deeply connected with learning (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Schunk & Greene, 2018). Thus, two dimensions of the individual preparation process are distinguished. The first dimension focuses on motivation and motivational strategies (Ilishkina et al., 2022), and the second relates to self-regulated learning (Panadero & Alonso-Tapia, 2014; Zimmerman, 1990). Students have to self-regulate themselves to achieve the goal-passing the Matura exam. They can repeat the trial during the next school year if they do not pass it, but they officially lose institutional support.

Data from CERMAT show that in 2022, approximately 14% of students failed the exit exam. Consequently, there is a tendency to persist in failure despite repeated remedial attempts. For remedial attempts in 2022, the failure rate was 72%. Given the importance of students' preparation, this raises the question: how does the approach to preparation for the Matura exit exam change in the context of individual remedial attempts? 

In this paper's framework, we use the forethought phase (where task analysis also plays one of the key roles), the performance phase and the self-reflection phase, as described by Zimmerman and Moylan (2009). These three phases can be observed in repeatedly failed examinees at each attempt when they try to pass the Matura exam. Attention is paid to the reflective phase towards failure, influencing the following preparation (Panadero, 2017). Therefore, this paper aims to describe the changes in individual and social aspects of self-regulated learning that occur while achieving the Matura exam.

This proposal is part of a broader research project called "Life pathways of unsuccessful graduates" (CZ.02.3.68/0.0/0.0/19_076/0016377), supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. For this particular proposal, we work with transcripts of 44 interviews, giving us 27 interviewees. These were examinees who had at least twice failed the Matura exam and whose first attempt was in 2019 or 2020. Our analyse is based on deductive coding, in which we used the description of the three phases SRL process of Panadero and Alonso-Tapia (2014). They expanded Zimmerman and Moylan's (2009) original SRL model. The first step in the analysis was to carefully specify all three phases of the Czech environment and the purpose of the Matura exam. As a result of deductive coding, we could identify all three (forethought, performance and self-reflection) phases. The second step constituted inductive coding in a Schiffrin et al. (2008) way of discourse analysis. This step of analysis helped us to obtain a deeper understanding of the whole process influenced by each attempt and external factors which these attempts influenced (e.g. significant other, consequences of repeated unsuccess).

The research results suggest that regulating one's own learning and setting a strategy seems crucial for passing the final exam. A lack of intrinsic motivation is evident in the initial preparation, which leads to neglecting the learning goals at the expense of other activities. This results in an underestimation of the situation and failing the exit exam. However, in the reflective phase, the cause of failure is defined as unstable and external (Anderson, 2005), which leads to the absence of changing examinees' study approach. The second failure represents a shock caused by leaving the school environment and coping with the new demands of the labour market and a new job. The student also occurs under social and societal pressure. Society assumes that an examinee is supposed to pass the Matura exam when he/she successfully studied for four years at secondary school. Thus, there is a reassessment of the examinee's approach. Thus, the social context leads the student to internalise external motives (Ryan & Deci, 2017), which promotes a transformation in learning strategy, motivation and higher effort. However, new roles associated with work and emerging adulthood influence preparation for subsequent attempts. The data suggest that failure and a sense of failure lead to individual transformations on the part of the student that is accelerated by the social context. This supports the reflection of the examinee on his/her preparation strategy and allows them to focus on its transformation.

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