What the private education market is worth
At 31 December 2025, education units in forms of ownership other than public employed 6,479 people. A year earlier the figure was 4,472, and in 2023 — 4,578. Over the same period, public education fell from 97,689 to 96,630 employees.
The remaining figures show how much room is left. Non-state early education means 16 institutions in the whole country, with 1,339 places and 952 children enrolled. There are around 70 driving schools, with 123 branch offices, of which 34 in the municipality of Chișinău, 8 in Bălți, 5 in Cahul and 3 in Comrat.
And the largest payer in this field is not the family but the employer. In 2024, companies across the economy spent 264.7 million lei — around 13 million euro — on continuing vocational training for their employees, against 240.9 million in 2023 and 175.9 million in 2022. A total of 134,497 employees went through courses, and 42.2% of companies provided at least one form of training.
Why now is a good time to open an education business
Because the rules have settled on paper, and you can read them before you sign a lease. Since 30 December 2025 the list of activities subject to sanitary operating authorisation has been written by CAEM class: you know exactly that the kindergarten, the school and the training centre are on the list, and that the driving school is not. Until then the same list was framed by category of institution and left room for interpretation at every inspection.
Because there is no licence. No state examination, no waiting on a licensing deadline, no dependence on a commission that meets quarterly. What is required is an external evaluation tied to the programme you teach and the place you teach it in — a quality condition rather than a barrier to entry.
And because the figures point the right way: nearly 2,000 additional jobs in non-government education in a single year, in a field where the average gross wage in the private sector, approximately 17,600 lei — around 880 euro — in the fourth quarter of 2025, sits above the national average. The company that holds all of it together — an SRL — is registered with no minimum share capital, in a few working days.
What it costs to open
The sanitary operating authorisation costs nothing. You pay only for the assessment of the unit’s sanitary condition, 875 lei — around 44 euro — settled when the application is filed. The file asks for the ownership deed or the lease for the space and the list of activities you will provide, and the issuing deadline is ten working days. Validity is five years if you own the building or the lease runs longer than five years; if the lease is shorter, the authorisation ends with it.
The external evaluation for provisional authorisation or accreditation is paid for, and the fee is calculated under a methodology approved by the Government, according to the programme and the institution being evaluated — there is no single tariff you can budget for in advance. What you can plan is the calendar: the evaluation happens before you begin operating, so it belongs in the start-up budget, not the operating one.
Registering the SRL has no minimum share capital and takes a few working days at the Public Services Agency — we file the papers, pick the CAEM codes and hand you a company ready for the evaluation file. The rest of the budget — the premises, the fit-out, the furniture, the vehicle fleet if it is a driving school, and above all the salaries — is where your choices matter.
What to know before you open
The external evaluation happens before, not after
The law says that private general-education institutions at every level, and companies providing educational services or general-education study programmes, undergo external evaluation for provisional operating authorisation before they begin operating.
The second half of that sentence is the part people miss: you do not have to call yourself a school. A company selling a general-education study programme falls under the same rule. The evaluation is carried out by the National Agency for Curriculum and Assessment, and the act is issued by the Ministry of Education and Research.
For technical vocational education and for adult vocational training, the external evaluation is carried out by a different agency — ANACEC. These are two separate institutions with separate procedures, and the first question you have to answer is which of the two systems your programme falls into.
The sanitary authorisation follows the CAEM code, not the company
The list of activities subject to sanitary operating authorisation includes classes 85.10, 85.20, 85.31, 85.32 and 85.59. It does not include 85.51, 85.52, 85.53 and 85.60. That means a dance school files nothing with the National Agency for Public Health, while the language centre across the street does.
If you run several activities under one company — language courses and a dance club, for instance — the obligation is established by code, not by company. And the authorisation is granted per address: a second location means a second file.
The boundary between a kindergarten and a crèche is drawn by code as well. Pre-primary education is 85.10 and requires a sanitary authorisation; day care for children is 88.91 and, for the alternative services established by the Government, works by notification. The same house, the same children, two regimes.
Education services are VAT-exempt, but without the right to deduct
The Tax Code exempts from VAT the goods and services of public and private education institutions relating directly to the delivery of the education process under the Education Code, as well as services for instructing children and adolescents in clubs, sections and studios.
The exemption comes without the right to deduct, though: the VAT you pay on rent, furniture, textbooks and equipment stays a cost and is not recovered. And the exemption is tied to the education process under the Education Code, and therefore to your status in the system — an economic reason, not merely a formal one, to go through authorisation.
Hygiene training is required of fewer people than you think
The list of occupations requiring compulsory hygiene training does not include teachers. It includes educators’ assistants in early-education institutions and childminders providing alternative care services, plus the person designated by management to organise and monitor the cleaning of the premises. If the institution has a catering unit, the kitchen staff are covered too.
All of them take four hours of training on hiring and once every five years thereafter.
A second location is authorised from scratch
For driving schools the rule is written twice in the same regulation: programmes are obtained for each location and each branch office, and the external evaluation is likewise carried out for each location and branch office. For a kindergarten and a training centre, the sanitary authorisation is issued per address, so it starts over in the same way.
In practice, expanding in this field is not a matter of copying a file but of rebuilding it. It is worth planning from the company structure onwards: CAEM codes declared from the start for every activity you will have, so that you do not repeat the registration alongside the authorisation.
An SRL — Moldova’s limited liability company — is the form an education business opens in, and the first reason is the way the law describes the holder of the permissive acts. In the wording of the regulation, a driver training unit is a legal person under public or private law. Adult education providers are legal persons under public or private law. The provisional operating authorisation is granted to private general-education institutions and to legal entities providing educational services. In this field, a company is not a matter of prestige — it is the form in which you are recognised.
The second reason is liability. You work with children, with training vehicles, with premises that dozens of people enter every day. An SRL’s liability stays limited to the share capital, and your personal assets sit outside the business — exactly the line you want drawn from day one.
And there is no entry threshold: an SRL has no minimum share capital, is registered at the Public Services Agency within a few working days, and opens everything that follows. You can hire teachers, educators and instructors on individual employment contracts — an eligibility condition for accreditation, not merely a formality. You can sign training contracts with employers and issue invoices. You can open a second branch office. You can file the sanitary authorisation application for each address.
The entrepreneur’s patent remains a genuine option for a single teacher, and we will say so plainly. Teaching foreign languages, individually or in groups of up to 20 people, costs 140 lei a month in Chișinău, Bălți, Bender and Tiraspol, 70 lei in other municipalities and towns and 35 lei in rural localities — around 7, 3.5 and under 2 euro. Teaching and tutoring in other subjects, as well as teaching music, dance and fine arts, costs 100, 50 and 30 lei. Interest groups for children up to 16 are cheaper still: 70, 35 and 20 lei. And since 2025, individual childcare has an entry of its own, at 200, 150 and 100 lei.
It comes with two limits you reach quickly if things go well: sales revenue may not exceed 300,000 lei — around 15,000 euro — over 12 consecutive months, and the patent holder has no right to hire employees. In other words you cap the business at roughly 25,000 lei of monthly takings, around 1,250 euro, and at a single person teaching — you. A second group running in parallel, the first colleague, the first receptionist automatically means a company. More important still: on a patent you cannot hold a provisional operating authorisation, so you cannot open a kindergarten and you cannot sell an accredited programme.
The sole trader — the întreprindere individuală — looks like a shortcut between the two, but it is not. The law states outright that an ÎI is not a legal person and that its owner is liable without limit, with their entire personal estate. You pay the same taxes as a company and keep the same records, but you retain the personal risk of a patent — the combination with no advantage at all.
Moving from a patent to an SRL is not a restart from zero: the same students, the same room, the same reputation. What changes is who signs the contracts — and, with it, what you are able to sign. We register the SRL, pick the CAEM codes for every activity you will have, and prepare the sanitary authorisation file in parallel, so that you do not miss the start of the school year.
