The overall budgeting for the educational system was also coordinated by the Ministry of Education and consisted of the budgets submitted by the various people's councils for primary and secondary schools as well as the ministry's own estimated budget needs for vocational and higher schools and for operating the entire system. In 1969, the latest year for which official statistics were available, approximately 6 percent of the state budget was allocated to education. Preschool Education Preschool education, consisting principally of kindergartens, was available on an optional basis for all children between the ages of three and six. Attendance was free, and enrollment was encouraged by the government as an essential step in the communist educational system of developing "correct" socialist values and attitudes in youth. Kindergartens were organized by districts and were located at the facilities of local enterprises, state organizations, and cooperative agencies. In certain areas, day nurseries attached to kindergartens provided care for the children of working mothers, for which a fee, generally in proportion to the parents' wages, was charged. If the school was large enough, classes were generally organized on an age-group basis, each with a teacher or supervisor. The number of children attending kindergartens has steadily increased since 1960. During the 1969/70 school year more than 428,000 children, approximately 40 percent of all those eligible, were enrolled in about 10,000 kindergartens and nurseries. Official estimates anticipated that this attendance figure would increase appreciably in future years as more working mothers were added to the labor force. Primary Education Primary education was provided, in early 1972, to all children between the ages of six and sixteen in eight-year elementary schools as part of the compulsory education program. During the 1969/70 school year enrollment was about 3.3 million students in about 15,000 schools throughout the country. Instruction was conducted principally in the Romanian language, but in those areas with large minority populations Hungarian- or German-speaking teachers were employed, and special texts were also available in those languages.