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 each educational unit:

• re-enrollment of children who are attending kindergarten this school year and wish to attend again 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-enrollments and enrollments will be established by the management of the educational unit 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 county school inspectorate websites.

Filling the available spots, 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 spaces, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment requests is higher than the number of available spots, general and specific separation criteria will be applied successively.

The general separation criteria are as follows:

• 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/family placement is similar to the case of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned by only one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child’s degree of disability.

The specific separation criteria (developed 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, the specific separation criteria will be applied only after exhausting the general criteria.

To ensure transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of preschool education units will display, in plain sight, for all interested parties, the following information:

• the institution’s capacity (the number of children for which it was designed);
• the number of places 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 children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the established period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool education units are also required to visibly display the 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).