The online applications for enrolling children at kindergartens of the municipality of Chisinau are stored in the database and will be examined this month, acting head of the General Division of Education, Youth and Sport Viorica Negrei stated for IPN. The inquiry was made after a number of parents complained that the website www.egradinita.md is nonfunctional as they received no confirmation of the receipt of the online applications.
According to Viorica Negrei, September-December is the period when applications are collected, while from January the responsibility for enrolling children at kindergartens is shifted onto the managers of preschool education institutions. “The parents will receive acknowledgments of their applications and the row number instead of the paper they received until now. This is not done in all the institutions simultaneously as the functioning of the system should be monitored and situations when local commissions reach an impasse should be prevented. All the applications will be processed in January,” stated the official.
This month, after the children are registered based on online applications, the number of vacant places will be posted on the website. “We will publish the number of vacancies from now on as the system data start to be processed and the figures will periodically change, depending on how often the local commissions meet. No representative of the Division will become involved in the process of enrolling children at kindergartens and of accepting or rejecting applications,” said Viorica Negrei.
The criteria for registering children include their age and place of residence, not yet the period when the application was submitted. “For example, if someone has a child aged several days and registers this under No. 10, while another child who is two years and a half is under No. 20, when the second reaches three this will be admitted to the kindergarten the first. Registration can also be made when the child turns three and this will be given priority as the Education Code obliges us to enroll this,” explained the official.
Asked why the website announced initially for kindergarten enrolment - www.inscriere-gradinite.md - is not functional, Viorica Negrei said last July, when the announcement was made, the Division was in the process of obtaining the domain and the site was ultimately registered as www.egradinita.md.
In the municipality of Chisinau, there are 159 preschool education institutions, 131 of which are situated in Chisinau, while 28 in the suburbs. The local public authorities are in charge of registration to suburban kindergartens.
Currently, the kindergartens are attended by 37,500 children, about 3,300 of whom are younger than three.
