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 attending kindergarten this school year and who 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-enrollments and enrollments 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 school inspectorates’ websites.

The occupation of available places, after the re-enrollment process is completed, will generally 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 between the ages of 2 and 3 can also be enrolled in the small group.

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

The general tie-breaking criteria are as follows:

• 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 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 to the child’s degree of disability.

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

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

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

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