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

• re-enrollment of children who attend 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 for re-enrollment and enrollment will be set 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 the county school inspectorates.

The allocation of the remaining free spots, after the re-enrollment process is finalized, will usually 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 limits of available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

If, in an educational unit, the number of enrollment requests is greater than the number of available spots, general selection criteria and specific selection criteria will be applied successively.

The general selection 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 placement center/family placement is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned of both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned of one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child's degree of disability.

The specific selection criteria (developed by each preschool education unit, approved by its Board of Directors, and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/of Bucharest until May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, specific selection criteria will be applied only after the general criteria have been exhausted.

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

• the institution's capacity (the number of children for which it was designed);
• the number of spots approved by the schooling plan for the 2018-2019 school year (by age group: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for enrolling children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (during the established period) out of the total available.

We mention that private preschool education 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).