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

• the re-registration of children who are attending kindergarten this school year and wish to attend in the 2018-2019 school year as well - will begin on May 7;
• registration of new children will take place from May 21.

The schedule for re-registrations and registrations will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the websites of the school inspectorates.

The filling of vacant places, after the completion of the re-registration process, will generally be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: large group (children of 5 years), middle group (children of 4 years) and small group (children of 3 years). Based on Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the limit of available places, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational institution, the number of registration requests is higher than the number of available places, general selection criteria and specific selection criteria will be applied successively.

The general selection criteria are as follows:

• 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 assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate for the child's degree of disability.

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

In order to ensure the transparency of the re-registration/registration process, the leadership of the preschool educational institutions will display, visibly, for all interested, the following information:

• the capacity of the institution (the 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-registered/registered daily (during the established period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational institutions also have the obligation to display in a visible place 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).