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 each educational institution:

• re-enrollment of children who are attending kindergarten in this school year and wish to attend it also in the 2018-2019 school year - will start 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, for the information of parents and the interested public, including on its website (if it exists), and possibly on the websites of the county school inspectorates.

The filling of available spots, after the re-enrollment process, 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 limits of available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 can also be enrolled in the small group.

In case the number of enrollment applications in an educational institution exceeds the number of available spots, general selection criteria and specific selection criteria will be applied successively.

The general selection criteria are the following:

• 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 of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned of 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 level.

The specific selection criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Board of Administration and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest Municipality Schools Inspectorate by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific selection criteria will be applied only after the general criteria have been exhausted.

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

• the institution's capacity (number of children for which it was designed);
• the number of approved spots according to the schooling 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 (during the set period) out of the total available.

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