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

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to attend 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-enrollment and enrollment will be established by the management of the educational unit and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for parents and the interested public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the school inspectorate’s websites.

The filling 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 limit 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 exceeds the number of available spots, general selection criteria and specific selection criteria will be applied successively.

The general selection criteria are as follows:

• 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 placement center/foster care is assimilated with the situation of a child orphaned by both parents);
• existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned by one parent;
• existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• existence of a medical certificate attesting the child’s degree of disability.

The specific selection criteria (elaborated by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Administration Council and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest Municipality until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific selection criteria will only be applied after the general criteria have been exhausted.

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

• the institution’s capacity (number of children it was designed for);
• the number of spots 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 (within the established period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational units also have the obligation 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).