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

• Re-enrollment of children attending kindergarten this school year and wishing to attend in the 2018-2019 school year as well - will begin on May 7;
• Enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollment and enrollment will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, to inform parents and other interested parties, including on their website (if available), and possibly on the websites of the school inspectorates.

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

If, in an educational institution, the number of enrollment applications exceeds the number of available places, general and specific tie-breaking criteria will be successively applied.

The general tie-breaking 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 by both parents);
• The existence of a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent only;
• The existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• The existence of a medical certificate classifying the child as having a disability.

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

To ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of preschool educational institutions will display, in plain sight, 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 registering children;
• The number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (within 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 about their status, specifically whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP).