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

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

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

The filling of available places, after the re-enrolment process ends, 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 limits of available places, children aged between 2 and 3 years may also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an institution, the number of enrolment applications exceeds the number of available places, general tie-breaking criteria 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 an orphan of both parents (the situation of a child from an orphanage/a placement center/foster care is assimilated to that of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is an orphan of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate proving the child’s degree of disability.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed by each preschool education institution, approved by its Board of Directors and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest Municipality until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrolment lists. Also, specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied only after exhausting general ones.

To ensure transparency of the re-enrolment/enrolment process, the management of preschool education institutions will visibly display, for all interested, the following information:

• the institution’s capacity (number of children for which it was designed);
• number of places approved by the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age groups: small, middle, big);
• the general and specific criteria for children’s enrolment;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the set period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool education institutions are also obliged to display in a visible place information regarding their status, respectively whether they are authorized to operate provisionally or accredited by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-University Education (ARACIP).