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 each educational institution:

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to continue in the 2018-2019 school year - will start on May 7th;
• enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21st.

The schedule for re-enrollment and enrollment will be set by the management of the educational institution and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested parties, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the school inspectorates' websites.

The allocation of the available places, 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 limit of available places, children aged between 2 and 3 may also be enrolled in the small group.

In case, in an institution, the number of enrollment applications is greater than the number of available spaces, general enrollment criteria and specific enrollment criteria will be successively applied.

The general enrollment criteria are the following:

• 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 foster center/family foster care is assimilated to that of a child who is orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent;
• having a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate classifying the child as having a disability.

The specific enrollment criteria (drawn up by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Administrative Council, and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/Bucharest Municipality until May 18th) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-registration lists. Also, the specific enrollment criteria will be applied only after the general ones have been exhausted.

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

• the institution's capacity (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved through the school plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, large);
• general and specific criteria for children’s enrollment;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (within the established period) from the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational institutions are also required to publicly display information regarding their status, namely whether they are authorized to operate temporarily or are accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (ARACIP).