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 who attend kindergarten in this school year and wish to attend it in the 2018-2019 school year as well - 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 each educational unit and will be posted, in a visible place, in each kindergarten, for the information of parents and interested members of the public, including on its website (if available), and possibly on the websites of school inspectorates.

The filling of available spots, after the completion of the re-enrollment process, will generally be done in descending order of age groups, as follows: the large group (5-year-old children), the middle group (4-year-old children), and the small group (3-year-old children). Based on Government Decision no. 1,252/2012 and within the 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 applications is greater than the number of available spots, general and specific tie-breaking criteria will be applied, successively.

The general tie-breaking criteria are as follows:

• 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 orphan of both parents);
• existence of a document proving that the child is orphan of one parent;
• existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational unit;
• existence of a medical certificate attesting the degree of disability of the child.

The specific tie-breaking criteria (developed 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 exhaustion of the general criteria.

To ensure the transparency of the re-enrollment/enrollment process, the management of preschool educational units will openly display, for all interested parties, the following information:

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

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