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

• the 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;
• the enrollment of new children will take place starting May 21.

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

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

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

The general separation criteria are as follows:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is an orphan of both parents (a child from an orphanage/a foster care center/family placement is assimilated to the status of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving he/she is orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate classifying the child as disabled.

The specific separation criteria (developed by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Administration Council and endorsed by the County/Bucharest School Inspectorate by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment 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 publicly display, for all concerned, the following information:

• the capacity of the institution (the number of children it was designed for);
• the number of places approved through the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age group: small, middle, big);
• the general and specific criteria for children's enrollment;
• 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 display in a visible place 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).