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

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to continue in the 2018-2019 school year - will begin 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 administration of the educational unit and will be visibly posted 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 allocation of available spots, after the re-enrollment process is completed, 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.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment applications is higher 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 orphaned by both parents (the situation of a child coming from a children's home/foster center/family placement is considered equivalent to that 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 disability degree.

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

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

• the capacity of the institution (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 group: 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 units are also required to visibly display information regarding their status, specifically whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP).