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

• re-enrollment of children who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to attend in the 2018-2019 school year as well - will start 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 interested public, including on its website (if one exists), and possibly on the school inspectorate websites.

The filling of free spots, after the completion of the re-enrollment process, will usually be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: large 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 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 requests is higher than 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 an orphan of both parents (the situation of a child coming from an orphanage/a foster care center/family foster care is assimilated to the situation of a child orphaned of 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 educational unit;
• the existence of a medical certificate attesting the child's degree of disability.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed by each preschool educational unit, approved by its Management Board and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Bucharest Municipality Inspectorate by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, the specific tie-breaking criteria will only be applied after exhausting the general criteria.

In order to ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of preschool institutions will display prominently, for all those interested, the following information:

• the institution's capacity (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 groups: small, middle, large);
• the general and specific criteria for enrolling children;
• the number of children re-enrolled/enrolled daily (within the set period) out of the total available.

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