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

• re-enrollment of children who are attending kindergarten this school year and wish to attend it also in the 2018-2019 school year - will begin on May 7;
• enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21.

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

The occupation of available places, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will generally be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: the large group (children aged 5), the middle group (children aged 4), and the small group (children aged 3). Based on Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the limit of available seats, children aged between 2 and 3 may also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment applications exceeds the number of available places, general separation criteria and specific separation criteria will be successively applied.

The general separation 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 a children's home/a placement center/foster care is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving the child is an orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate establishing the degree of disability of the child.

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

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

• the capacity of the institution (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved according to 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 educational units also have the obligation to visibly post 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).