Francis Gilbert, author of Parent Power: The complete guide to getting the best education for your child, believes that in order to find your way through the school jungle 'you need to know what kind of animal you are in it before you can work out the best way to survive.'

Here he sets out the categories - which one do you think you are?

Giraffe parents
Giraffe parents have very long necks – they can peer over the top of the school jungle and gain a long-distance perspective. Having their feet on the ground but their heads high in the air, giraffe parents want their child to go to a state school but want him or her to do academically well in it. They are troubled by some of the stories they read in the press about schools, but they are not brainwashed by them. They are quite happy for their children to mix with any social class but they have definite expectations that their child will go to a good university and ultimately have a rewarding career.

Giraffe parents don't panic because they know, having read all the research, that finally it is parental support that is the most important factor in a child's attainment at school. I like to think of myself as being a giraffe parent, although frightening there are moments when I am an Eagle parent.

Eagle parents
An eagle parent contrasts with a giraffe parent, his nearest social ally in the school jungle, in that he wants his child to do very well academically, but he also wants to remove his child from society which might 'coarsen' him or her. Eagle parents send their children to state or private schools with social cachet and want to use the system to fly up the social ladder.

Leopard parents
Leopard parents want to put their child into some sort of serious training of one sort or another so that he or she can run very fast in his chosen field. Leopard parents train their children to be footballers, athletes or tennis players from a very early age and expect their children to go to a school that will assist them with this project such as a specialist sports school.

Wildebeest parents
Wildebeest parents want their children to muck in with everyone else. They send their children to local community schools and feel that the most a child can get out of school is to be a 'fully rounded' human being who is part of the benevolent herd. They never feel happier than when they see their children playing with their friends from around the corner. Academic achievement, although a concern, is contrary to social fulfilment. They will probably hate my book, although they may well read it because there are often the best educated of us all.

Famous wildebeest parents are scary people like Fiona Millar (Education Guardian columnist and TV programme presenter), Phil Beadle (Teacher of the Year) and John O'Farrell, author of the excellent novel May Contain Nuts. I have interviewed the last two to give them a fair hearing. I also have spoken to a number of older wildebeest parents who have come to rue their earlier attitudes. These people are highly educated liberals who sent their children to comprehensives on principle, only to find that their children grew up totally uninterested in the academic pursuits of their parents. Life at a wildebeest school gave their children great social skills but very little in the way of academic qualifications or interests. This was now a source of great regret to their parents, who felt they had little connection with their children. This is perhaps the biggest reason why I have rejected the wildebeest mentality - although I know it is probably the most morally proper position to hold.

Anteater parents
Anteater parents keep their noses to the ground, eat the ants in front of them and never look up to get a good view of what is really going on. This makes them prone to be victims of the system; they assume that the school jungle is benign when it is not.

A***hole parents
One frustrated parent and observer of many parents over the years in the area (Upminster) where I teach, Mike Robinson, memorably posed the rhetorical question to me, 'Why are so many parents a***holes?' Now what you have to understand here is that Mike does not live in an area of high deprivation, full of hideous social problems. He lives in one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet he has seen during his many voyages to parents' evenings – he has two teenage sons – and various social functions that many parents are just simply a***holes! Most importantly, he is not a teacher – but his thoughts are surprisingly in tune with the majority of teachers I interviewed as well. He explained to me:

'There are many parents around who feel a lot of antagonism towards teachers. Everything is always the teachers' fault. They think that teachers are nearly always wrong, that they don't understand young people. They think that teachers are there to bully their children. They use the phrase 'she's a good girl really' a great deal, which is basically a euphemism for 'she's an absolute pain in the backside'. They have no respect for education, for books, for newspapers, for museums, for culture in general: they just believe in making money. And don't get me wrong, a***hole parents aren't poor. They've often made a lot of money by setting up their own businesses and what have you, but the bottom line is that they don't have a book in the house and yet they expect their children to be properly educated without any input from them.

Which sort of parent are are you?
It's worth trying to work out what kind of parent you are because it will affect very deeply the choices you make for your child. Leopard, eagle and giraffe parents are very different types of parents in many ways but all have common aims. They are looking for very specific schools; you really need a good map of the school jungle before you can work out where might be the best school for your child.

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