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

• re-enrollment 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;
• enrollment of new children will be conducted starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollment and enrollment will be set by the management of the educational unit 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 school inspectorates.

The filling of available spots, after the completion of the re-enrollment process, will generally be done in descending order of age group, 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 spots, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

In the event that, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment requests is greater than the number of available spots, general tie-breaking criteria and specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied, successively.

The general tie-breaking criteria are as follows:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is an orphan of both parents (the case of a child coming from an orphanage/a placement center/family placement is assimilated to the case of a child orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving the child is an orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate classifying the child with a handicap degree.

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

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

• the capacity of the institution (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of spots 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 re-enrolled/enrolled children daily (within the set period) out of the total available.

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