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

• re-enrollment of children attending kindergarten this school year and wishing to attend it in the 2018-2019 school year – will begin on May 7;
• 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 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 any), and possibly on the websites of the school inspectorates.

Filling of vacant places, after completion of the re-enrollment process, will generally be done in descending order of the age groups, as follows: large group (children of 5 years old), middle group (children of 4 years old), and small group (children of 3 years old). Based on HG 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 spots, general and specific differentiation criteria will be applied successively.

The general differentiation criteria are the following:

• the existence of a document proving a child is orphaned by both parents (the situation of a child coming from a children's home/a placement center/family placement is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned by one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate certifying the child’s disability status.

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

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

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

We mention that private preschool education institutions also have the obligation to post in a visible place information about their status, namely whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP).