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

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten this school year and wish to continue attending in the 2018-2019 school year - will start on May 7;
• enrollment of newly arrived children will be carried out starting May 21.

The schedule for re-enrollments and enrollments will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, to inform parents and the interested public, including on their website (if available), 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: big 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 limit of available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 can also be enrolled in the small group.

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

The general selection 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 an orphanage/a placement center/foster care 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 institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child's degree of disability.

The specific selection criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Administrative Council and endorsed by the School Inspectorate of the county/Bucharest municipality 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 post, 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 through the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age group: small, medium, large);
• the general and specific criteria for enrolling children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (in the established period) out of the total available.

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