Abstract:

In Slovak Republic there is a long-term perceived lack of interest of primary school graduates in secondary vocational schools. After the school reform in 2008, the time allocation for the subject technics, which is focused on general technical education. While in the previous period, the subject of technics was taught from 5th to 9th grade of primary school with time allocation of 1 hour per week, after the reform the subject technics was taught only in 7th and 8th grade with time allocation of 0.5 hour per week. The school reform had major impact on the content and time allocation of the subject technics, nowadays subject technics is compulsory taught with time allocation of 33 hours per the entire studies. This number of hours cannot be sufficient to support education of technics, on the contrary, it will make significant contribution to increasing the lack of interest in technical education. As a result of this fact, graduates of primary school didn’t have opportunity to get to know the basics of technics, the properties of technical materials and to gain basic technical skills. This fact is confirmed by statistics published by the School Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, which point out that pupils prefer humanitarian secondary schools. Same facts are shown by independent researches made in recent years. From the results of researches is clear that the least interest is for school focused of technics. In society, the issue is given increased attention, as in the industrial practice there is a lack of qualified workers. We assumed that the issue is because of insufficient awareness among pupils and their parents about opportunities to find employment in practice. We conducted a research on sample of pupils graduating at primary school aimed for the factors influencing their choice of secondary school. We present in the paper the obtained results showing the most important factors for choice of secondary school.

Keywords:

The choice of secondary school, technical education, technical skill, motivation.