In the increasingly advanced information age we live in, data is a precious resource in all fields, and education is no exception. The huge amount of data generated by education systems has created opportunities for educational research

Using data mining methods and techniques and artificial intelligence in education can improve students' learning processes and academic performance. In this sense, an essential objective is to discover patterns from large volumes of data for the personalization of learning, the anticipation of student performance, the prevention of school dropout, the evaluation of the effectiveness of educational programs, the creation of automated learning systems, the enhancement of teaching processes, innovation in education.

In our paper we aim to analyze the current state of research in data mining and artificial intelligence to identify the methods and techniques used, but also the benefits of using them to improve the educational act.

In a future project, we propose to apply the techniques and methods identified as the most frequently used, on original data sets that lead to the best possible quality of pre-university education in Romania.