Kindergarten is optional under the age of five. Compulsory schooling usually starts at age 5, with the last year of kindergarten ("grupa mare"), which is mandatory in order to enter primary school. Schooling is compulsory until the twelfth grade (which corresponds with the age of eighteen or nineteen). The school educational cycle ends in the twelfth grade, when students graduate the baccalaureate. Higher education is aligned onto the European Higher Education Area. In addition to the formal system of education, to which was recently added the equivalent private system, there is also a system of tutoring, semi-legal and informal.