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:

• re-enrollment of children attending kindergarten this school year and wanting 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-enrollments and enrollments will be set by the management of each educational institution and will be displayed, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and the interested public, including on its website (if it exists), and possibly on the websites of school inspectorates.

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

In the situation where, in an educational institution, the number of enrollment requests is greater 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 orphaned of both parents (the situation of a child coming from a children’s home/a placement center/foster care is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that a child is orphaned of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting to the child’s disability.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Board of Administration and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest School Inspectorate by 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.

In order to ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of preschool educational institutions will display, visibly, for all interested parties, 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 (per age groups: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for the enrollment of children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the established period) from 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).