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

• 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;
• enrollment of new children will be conducted 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 the interested public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the websites of the school inspectorates.

The filling of free 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 available places, children aged between 2 and 3 can also be enrolled in the small group.

If the number of enrollment requests in an educational unit exceeds the number of free places, general tie-breaking criteria 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 foster care center/foster care is assimilated to that of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that he/she is orphaned by one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in that educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate stating the child’s disability degree.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (elaborated by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Board of Administration and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest City Inspectorate until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific tie-breaking 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 units will display, for all those interested, the following information in a visible place:

• the institution’s capacity (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved by the school plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for children’s enrollment;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (in the established period) from the total available.

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