Primary teachers -help! Been told success at Primary level is 90% the parents? True or false?

[PeasForTeaAgain]

Help! In choosing primary schools, the private vs state debate (very small debate as we have no money, but still debating for the fun of it!). Have heard that spending money on private primary schools is pointless as it is 90% parental attitude and involvement. Is this rubbish? If you pay for an outstanding private school is it worth it over a good state school? Is it really down to the parents at Primary age? Going a little crazy? I am...

I think a huge (quite possibly main) factor in success of child's education is the children in the class they are in. A very difficult child puts extra strain on already stretched teachers and ultimately means the rest of the class lose out (the extent to which depends on the ability of teacher to deal with said child / children).

Ime you can get a difficult child in any type of state school - regardless of catchment area. You are unlikely to have such child in a private school as their parents wouldn't pay for it and other parents would put up such a stink about it.

I speak as a primary teacher having taught in variety of state schools and a private one. And as a mother of a pre-schooler who is already concerned about a potential 'difficult' child in ds nursery class!

Parental interest and involvement is priceless btw.

Wise words, thank you! You see, I am where you are. Stressed about it. We have an outstanding school that we can't get into, and an outstanding private that we can. none of the others are BAD, but still, there is only one first placem isn't there?!

Oh, I think there are parents who pay for schools who think their child is so important he or she must never be crossed or criticised by the teacher. Going private is no guarantee of good behaviour all round. Saw a mother at the girls' primary near me screetching at another mother like a fishwife - apparently something to do with accusations of bullying by one child against another.

Never had parental scenes in the playground at ds's state primary. [smug emoticon]

I agree with ja9 - depends upon who is in the class. Problem for us whilst in state was that 5 troublesome children out of 30 was too much for the teacher to cope with - however now in the private we have one troublesome out of 13 - much easier to deal with.

also depends on the child and their individual needs

The most important factor to a child succeeding educationally is the education of the mother. Saw that on Child of Our Time.

Is way more important than private or state apparently.

It's not so much a potential disruption thing for me but a standards thing. DD is bright (a little bit ahead of the game, no genius) but I want her potential to be realised, not just stuck learning stuff she already knows. Flum, if the Professor says so, then it must be so! He is fab!

Flum, that's a statistical correlation - doesn't mean it's necessarily cause and effect (although it may be), nor that it always applies at the individual level.

Robert Winston didn't come up with the mothers' education fact, he merely mentioned it in his programme.

You don't get as many "difficult" kids in private schools because many won't take kids with special needs, even if the parents will pay for it. How they comply with the DDA is a mystery to me. You can still have rich disruptive kids though - but I guess the parents have more incentive to sort them out if they are paying! And the school is receiving fees for a service so they have an incentive to sort it out too.

However, I went to a school governors' conference in the summer and at that conference they said that only 14% of a child's attainment is down to the school, the rest is parents, peers, natural intelligence I guess, illnesses etc etc. So the 10% figure doesn't sound far off.

Definitely the mother. I got a credit for my scale model of a pyramid made this weekend