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 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 take place starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollments and enrollments will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be displayed, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the school inspectorates’ websites.

The allocation of available places, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will generally be done in descending order of 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 available places, children aged between 2 and 3 years may also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational institution, the number of enrollment applications exceeds the number of available places, general separation criteria and specific separation criteria will be applied successively.

The general separation 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 a children's home/a foster center/foster family is assimilated to the situation of a child who is an orphan of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child’s degree of disability.

The specific separation criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Board of Administration, and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Municipality of Bucharest by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific separation 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 (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved in 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 established period) out of the total available.

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