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

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten 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-enrollments and enrollments will be set by the management of each educational unit and will be visibly displayed in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and the general public, including on their website (if any), and possibly on the school inspectorate websites.

The filling of free spots, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will generally be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: big 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 available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in any educational unit, the number of enrollment requests exceeds the number of available spots, general and specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied successively.

The general tie-breaking criteria are the following:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is orphaned by both parents (children from orphanages/foster care/foster families are assimilated to the situation of children orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving 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 (drawn up by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Board of Administration and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/Bucharest School Inspectorate by May 18) may not be discriminatory and may not include pre-enrollment lists. Also, specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied only after the general criteria are exhausted.

To ensure transparency of 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 for whom it was designed);
• the number of spots approved by the enrollment plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, big);
• general and specific criteria for enrolling children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the established period) from the total available.

We mention that private preschool educational units also have the obligation to visibly display information regarding their status, namely if they are authorized to operate provisionally or are accredited by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-University Education (ARACIP).