professional growth, secondary technical school students, barriers in educational paths,students' views on improving professional growth, school strategies of students? support.

The aim of the paper is to find out how Czech secondary technical schools students evaluate their professional growth in the course of their secondary school studies, what are the barriers to this growth and what are their views on the possibilities of schools to support their interest in the chosen field of study. Qualitatively oriented research focuses on the quality of secondary school studies as regarded by secondary technical schools students in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. The research outputs provide suggestions for students to improve their professional growth throughout their secondary school studies and suggestions for procedures that may help remove barriers in their educational paths to a technically oriented profession. Respondents - secondary technical schools students - most frequently state the possibilities of their professional growth, comprising the "I-student" and "Teacher and teaching" factors. More than half of the barriers mentioned by students belong to the category of dispositional (personality) barriers. In second place are institutional barriers, and a negligible number of barriers have been included among situational barriers. The most significant number of students' opinions on how the school should deepen their interest in the field was concentrated in the group of factors "I - student". It is followed by opportunities to support interest in the "School" factor group.