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 each educational institution:

• 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 from May 21.

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

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: big group (children aged 5), middle group (children aged 4), and small group (children aged 3). Based on Government Decision no. 1.252/2012 and within the limit of available spots, children aged between 2 and 3 years can also be enrolled in the small group.

In the case where, at an educational institution, the number of enrollment requests is greater than the number of available spots, general and specific separation criteria will be applied, successively.

The general separation criteria are as follows:

• the existence of a document proving that a child is orphaned by both parents (the situation of a child from an orphanage/a placement center/family placement is assimilated to that of a child orphaned by both parents);
• the existence of a document proving that the child is orphaned by one parent;
• the existence of a brother/sister enrolled in the respective educational institution;
• the existence of a medical certificate stating the child is classified as disabled.

The specific separation criteria (developed by each preschool educational institution, approved by its Board of Directors and endorsed by the County School Inspectorate/the Municipality of Bucharest by May 18) cannot be discriminatory and cannot include pre-enrollment lists. Also, specific separation 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 institutions will display, visibly, for all interested, the following information:

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

We mention that private preschool educational institutions are also required 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).