This study investigates the effect of physics education on students' achievement in a large‐scale quantitative study of pre‐academic high school students throughout the Netherlands. Two aspects of teacher characteristics as perceived by their students are included: their “pleasantness” principally defined by their perceived friendliness and positive feedback and their “centeredness” principally defined by the perceived teacher centeredness in the lessons. Furthermore, this study includes four student aspects: their “general capability,” their “quantity of work,” their “quality of work,” and their “interest in the lessons.” Structural Equation Modeling is used in order to cluster the different variables defining the perceived pleasantness and the perceived centeredness of the teacher and the general capability, interest, and learning attitudes of the students. Furthermore, interrelations among these components and students' achievement are analyzed. Eventually, a very large effect of the students' general capability (61–72%) and a remarkably smaller effect of the remaining parameters (<3%) on achievement are detected. However, one should not yet conclude that teacher effect on high‐achieving‐students' achievement is consistently low. To the contrary, these results should be seen as an incentive to consider nonlinear effects, to vary ones viewpoint and to include more/other variables. In spite of the almost negligible correlation between the measured aspects of the physics teachers and achievement, the correlations between the teacher variables and the remaining student variables are quite significant. Both the perceived pleasantness and the centeredness of the teachers have a significant effect on the interest of their students. Furthermore, the pleasantness of the teacher correlates with the quality of the students' work and the centeredness of the teacher with their quantity of work. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 465–488, 2012