Matura
Matura or its translated terms is a Latin name for the secondary school exit exam or "maturity diploma" in various European countries, including Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine.
It is taken by young adults at the end of their secondary education, and generally must be passed in order to apply to a university or other institutions of higher education. Matura is a matriculation examination and can be compared to A-Level exams, the Abitur or the Baccalauréat.
By country
Albania
The official name is Matura Shtetërore which was introduced in 2006 by the Ministry of Education and Science replacing the school based Provimet e Pjekurisë. The Matura is the obligatory exam after finishing the gjimnaz to have one's education formally recognized and to become eligible to enroll in universities. Vocational schools, art schools and schools participating in pilot programs are part of the Matura with different exam structures and subjects. The Matura is a centralized affair, conducted by the QSHA which is in charge of selecting tasks, appointing national examiners, grading the sheets; other agencies ensure the safety and integrity of the exams.The three compulsory subjects to complete secondary education are Albanian language and literature, mathematics and a foreign language. Students in high schools must also take one additional exam which they choose themselves out of a list of eight subjects. The Matura exams take place in four separate days usually in the June/July period. The first three days are for each of the compulsory subjects; the fourth day is for the additional exam. The basic marks range from 4 to 10 where a 5 is the lowest passing mark; applicants fill out forms indicating their preferred universities with no ranking between them. The State Matura replaced an admission system conducted individually by each faculty/university which was seen as abusive.
Austria
The official term for Matura in Austria is Reifeprüfung. The document received after the successful completion of the written and oral exams is called Maturazeugnis.In the Gymnasium, which, as opposed to vocational schools, focuses on general education, the Matura consists of three to four written exams to be taken on consecutive mornings and two to three oral exams to be taken on the same half-day about a month later ; The higher vocational education schools such as HBLAs, HTLs, and HTBLAs follow a similar format. All examinations are held at the school which the candidate last attended. Candidates have the option to write a scholarly paper to be submitted at the beginning of the February preceding the final exams, which, if accepted, counts as a subject and must be defended in a corresponding oral exam.
The grading system is the one universally used in Austrian schools: 1 is excellent; 2 is good; 3 is satisfactory; 4 is passed and 5 means that the candidate has failed. In addition, a candidate's Maturazeugnis contains a formalized overall assessment: "mit ausgezeichnetem Erfolg bestanden", "mit gutem Erfolg bestanden", "bestanden" ; and '"nicht bestanden". Candidates who have failed may re-take their exams in September/October or February/March of the following school year.
Compulsory subjects for the written finals are always German and Mathematics, as well as a foreign language. Schools with a focus on science may require their students to take written finals in Biology or Physics.
The Austrian Matura used to be a decentralized affair, however since 2014 tests in Mathematics, German and foreign languages are now centralized and held at the same day throughout Austria. There is only one external examiner: candidates are set tasks both for their written and oral finals by their own teachers. Formally, however, there is an examination board consisting of a candidate's teachers/examiners, the headmaster/headmistress and one external Vorsitzende, usually a high-ranking school official or the head of another school. Oral exams are held publicly, but attendance by anyone other than a candidate's former schoolmates is not encouraged, and indeed rare.
It is possible for Austrians of all age groups to take the Matura. Adults from their twenties on are usually tutored at private institutions of adult education before taking their final tests, held separately before a regional examination board.
The new centralized Matura (Zentralmatura)
In 2015, the old Matura system was replaced by a new concept called Zentralmatura. Graduation exams are now put together by bifie and every graduation exam in Austria is now held on the same day. However, the teachers still correct all the exams themselves using an answer sheet that is included in the exam packages.Students can still choose either four or three written exams. When students choose three written exams, they will have to do another three oral exams. When choosing four written exams, only two additional oral exams are necessary.
What is also new is that every student now has to write a graduation paper called VWA. They can choose any topic they want, usually one year before graduating. When they have finished writing it, they have to present it to teachers and to the head. The VWA is another grade in the Maturazeugnis.
Bulgaria
In Bulgarian the matura is formally called държавен зрелостен изпит or ДЗИ, but usually it is called simply матура. There is only one compulsory subject – Bulgarian Language and Literature, but students are required to select an additional subject of their choice; they can also request a third and fourth subject. Each exam consists of a single written test. The second subject must be chosen between:- A foreign language
- Mathematics
- Physics and astronomy
- Biology and health education
- Chemistry and environmental science
- History and civilization
- Geography and economics
- cycle of "Philosophy"
- Information Technology
Croatia
The nationwide leaving exams were introduced for gymnasium students in the 2009/2010 school year. The examinations are conducted by the National Center for External Evaluation of Education. There are two available terms during which candidates can take their exams: the summer term, taking place during June, and the fall/autumn term, typically occurring in the last weeks of August. Many university faculties and other higher-education institutions already have their applications closed by the end of the summer term due to having reached their first-year students enrollment quota for the upcoming academic year.The compulsory subjects are available at elementary or higher level exams. Certain higher-education institutions require the candidate to take certain or all compulsory subject exams at the A level. On the other hand, there are higher-education programs requiring only the B level exams. In such cases, the candidate taking an exam in a certain subject on the A level is credited more points than a candidate taking the B level exam: 1 point on the A level exam is worth 1.6 points of the B level exam.
The three compulsory subjects are:
- Croatian,
- Mathematics,
- first foreign language. Students can only take the exam in a language if they had taken classes for at least two years of their high school education. Students of classical gymnasiums are therefore also able to choose Latin or Ancient Greek instead of a modern foreign language.
The optional subjects are Biology, Chemistry, Computer science, Ethics, Geography, History, Logics, Musical arts, Philosophy, Physics, Politics, Psychology, Religious studies, Sociology, and Visual arts. Optional subjects are available only at a single level. A gymnasium student is considered to have finished their high school education program upon passing only the three compulsory subjects ; if a student fails a Matura exam on an optional subject, that subject simply will not be listed on their certificate.
Students receive their exams in sealed opaque silver bags which they personally open typically by piercing the top with a pen and thus breaking the seal. Inside they get the exam booklet, the answer sheet, a concept booklet, a new opaque silver bag, and a piece of paper with barcode stickers used for candidate identification. Before they start taking the exam, students need to stick the barcodes on every booklet, paper and bag that they received. At the end, students gather all the examination material and seal it in the opaque silver bag they had received, which will then be sent back to NCVVO for grading. The answers of the exam questions are published typically two days after the exam day.
Examinees are allowed to file a complaint on grading, or even on the exam questions. On the 2012 Croatian language exam, a total of 7 exam questions were nullified due to multiple possible interpretations of the source text and the indiscrimination by the examinees shown by the psychometric analysis.
Further enrollment into higher education is conducted online via the National Computer System for Applications for Higher Education Institutions. Each candidate has the right to attempt to enroll at a maximum of 10 colleges, faculties, schools, and academies of universities, or other types of higher-education institutions. Lists of students with the right to enrollment are processed by the central computers of each institution's division. The rank is formed based on Matura exams points and optional additional criteria or extra points set by the institution that ranks the applicants, for example, admission exams, or GPA of final grades of each year in certain or all high school subjects.
For example, for a domestic student to enroll at the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, the following criteria needs to be met: they have acquired at least 55% on the compulsory admission exam, and they have passed the A level exams of the compulsory Matura subjects. Their final points are then calculated based on the following:
- the compulsory admission exam,
- the A level Matura exams: Croatian, Mathematics, foreign language,
- grade point average in all high school subjects.