The Ministry of National Education informs that, in order to include in preschool education children aged between 3 and 6 years, the following stages will take place, successively, at the level of each educational unit:

• the re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to attend it in the 2018-2019 school year as well – will begin on May 7;
• the enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollments and enrollments will be established by the management of the educational unit and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested public, also on the unit's website (if available), and possibly on the school inspectorates' websites.

The allocation of available places, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will usually be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: large group (5-year-old children), middle group (4-year-old children), and small group (3-year-old children). According to Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the limits of the available places, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment requests is higher than the number of available places, general tie-breaking criteria and specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied, successively.

The general tie-breaking criteria are the following:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is an orphan of both parents (the situation of a child coming from an orphanage/a placement center/foster care is equated with the situation of a child orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate certifying the child's degree of disability.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Board of Administration, and endorsed by the County/Bucharest School Inspectorate by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-registration lists. Also, the specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied only after the general criteria are exhausted.

To ensure transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of the preschool educational units will visibly display, for all interested parties, the following information:

• the institution's capacity (number of children for which it was designed);
• the number of places approved by the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for enrolling children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the set period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool education units also have the obligation to visibly display information regarding their status, namely whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-University Education (ARACIP).