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 unit:

• the re-enrollment of children who are attending kindergarten this school year and wish to attend also in the 2018-2019 school year - will begin on May 7;
• the 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 unit and will be displayed, in a visible place, in each kindergarten for the information of parents and interested public, including on its website (if it exists), and possibly on the websites of school inspectorates.

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

If, within an educational unit, the number of enrollment applications exceeds the number of available places, general and specific tie-breaking criteria will be successively applied.

The general tie-breaking criteria are as follows:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is orphaned by both parents (the situation of a child coming from a children’s home/a placement center/foster care is considered equivalent 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 unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child’s degree of disability.

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

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

• the institution’s capacity (the number of children for which it was designed);
• the number of places approved through 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 (within the set period) from the total available.

We mention that private preschool education units also have the obligation to display, in a visible place, 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).