The Association for Technical Culture of Slovenia (ZOTKS) organizes the Chemistry Competition for the Pregl Awards and Badges every year. The competition is intended for 8th- and 9th-grade primary school students, who compete for the Pregl Awards, and for secondary school students of all grades, who compete for the Pregl Badges. The competition tests knowledge in various areas of chemistry. Its purpose is to foster interest in chemistry and the natural sciences, promote science and scientific careers, strengthen students’ skills such as critical and logical thinking, problem-solving, and perseverance, as well as deepen traditional knowledge of chemistry. The competition also represents an important form of work with gifted students. The primary school competition is organized at three levels (school, regional, and national), with students advancing to higher levels based on their results. This allows for monitoring the range of achievements across levels. Based on the awarded points, it is possible to determine which topics are more challenging and which are the most common mistakes made by students. Students display varying degrees of individual interest in learning chemistry, with differences also observed between genders and among statistical regions of Slovenia. The research consisted of three parts and was based on a causal–non-experimental method. The first part involved an analysis of task difficulty and the range of possible percentage scores among participants, according to the competition level, gender, and statistical region of origin. The achievements of 32,087 8th- and 9th-grade students who took part in the chemistry competition between the 2021/22 and 2024/25 school years were analyzed. Specifically, the study examined: (1) the proportion of Slovenian students who participated in the chemistry competition, (2) challenging content areas, (3) trends in the recurrence of challenging content, (4) the range of possible scores at the school, regional, and national levels, (5) gender differences in performance, and (6) differences in performance according to statistical region. The results showed statistically significant differences in achievements by gender and region in individual years and levels of the competition, but these differences were not consistent. Across all school years, tasks in the content area Chemical Reactions proved to be the most challenging. The second part focused on an error analysis of individual tasks, based on 1,656 evaluated papers of 8th- and 9th-grade students who participated in the regional and national chemistry competitions in the 2023/24 school year. The most common errors included writing and balancing chemical reaction equations, writing and naming products of hydrocarbon reactions, and mistakes in calculation and rounding of results. The third part analyzed students’ interest in learning chemistry and their choice of secondary school programs. A questionnaire was completed by 370 students at the national chemistry competition in the 2024/25 school year. The findings revealed that students participated in the competition primarily out of personal interest and academic benefit, with the majority planning to enroll in general secondary grammar school programs (splošna gimnazija). These findings contribute to a better understanding of the challenges in learning chemistry and provide a basis for improving teaching practices, competition preparation, and the promotion of the natural sciences among young people.
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