Wizarding Education (number of students at Hogwarts followed by long digression)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

I believe that EVERY child in Britain and Ireland with ANY wizarding
power is invited to attend a school of magic. (There may be other
countries in which Muggle-born students are not invited, no matter how
powerful.) If all the students go to Hogwarts as JKR said, then
Hogwarts has 1000 students as JKR said, that would be all the
wizarding children, based on many previous threads about the size of
wizarding population. 

I believe that Hogwarts has several campus, the Castle that we see in
canon is the main campus, has approx 280 students as shown in canon,
and the children of less aptitude (and/or less family connections) are
sent to other campus. Some listees believe that Hogwarts has only one
campus, 280 students as depicted, and is the only School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry, but all the lesser students are sent to a School of
Magic instead. 

Either of those ideas would go along with Neville's statement that his
family, even after they were reassured that he wasn't a Squib, doubted
that he was magic enough to get in 'here': that is, to Hogwarts Main
Campus rather than another campus, or to School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry rather than to School of Magic.

If all 1000 students are at the one Hogwarts campus at Hogwarts
Castle, then Tom from the Leaky Cauldron and Stan Shunpike and Ernie
Prang and Madam Rosmerta went to school at Hogwarts Castle. (Btw why
do people assume that Madam Rosmerta has a poor education or a low
degree of magical talent just because she owns a restaurant with a bar?) 

I get the impression that JKR thinks all these people were in
Hufflepuff, which is why she has such a low opinion of Hufflepuff.
While we have seen nothing in canon to suggest that Stan and Ern and
Tom are exceptionally loyal or hard-working by nature, perhaps JKR and
the Sorting Hat believe that people who don't have enough talent or
charisma to get by in life by talent or charisma had better LEARN to
work hard even if it isn't in their nature.

The only children of wizarding parents who wouldn't get invited to ANY
school of magic are the Squibs, the ones who have no magical power at
all. Ron told us they are very rare ... very rare might mean one in a
lifetime! If Squibs can be identified at birth (and the Lombottomi
just didn't trust the results of the test on baby Neville) that might
be the origin of changelings: medieval wizarding parents who didn't
want a 'defective' child dumped it in the cradle of a Muggle child who
had died (high level of infant mortality in medieval period). Later,
when Muggles invented orphanages, those would have been used instead.
Filch's parents probably deserve some credit for KEEPING their
'defective' child, altho' they'd probably deserve even more credit if
they'd kept him AND had him educated to make a living in the Muggle
world, where being a Squib doesn't matter. 

***

I believe that the wizarding parents are responsible for their
children's elementary education. They can home-school, hire tutors,
send the child to a Muggle school (if they can do so without breaking
the law of Wizarding Secrecy), or send the child to small, local,
private, wizarding elementary school. I believe that MoM never checks
on whether the children are going to school and has no rules for
credentialling elementary schools, but if the children don't have
enough basic skills when they enter Hogwarts, the parents are fined
and are disgraced by having their names listed in the DAILY PROPHET as
"parents of stupid children". 

***

For some jobs, such as conductor on the Knight Bus and dishwasher at
the Leaky Cauldron, I bet the kid just out of Hogwarts has already
learned everything he/she needs. For some other jobs, the kid just out
of Hogwarts would have to get hired into a trainee position (which I
imagine is the kind of job that Percy had with Mr Crouch), and I
believe that there are other jobs for which a kid just out of Hogwarts
would have to go through an apprenticeship before being able to get an
entry-level (journeyman) job. 

There is some reference in canon to the NEWTs being the highest
qualification offered by Hogwarts, which doesn't rule out there being
Guilds that offer a higher qualification, such as two of them:
Journeyman and Master. I imagine that some of the Guilds would be very
much like graduate schools in Muggle universities, but JKR's statement
that there is no university for wizards would remain technically true
because the Guilds had not joined together as one institution named
University.

I am CERTAIN that the wizarding world has forms of continuing
education even tho' it doesn't have universities. Of course, one is to
study on one's own, reading books and doing experiments (which I
imagine that Tom Riddle did a lot of, before setting off to find Evil
 teachers). And to seek out teachers for an informal version of
apprenticeship, as it is  suggested Tom Riddle did. I suspect that
there isn't a Librarians Guild (and also no Bureaucrats Guild) so that
Irma Pince learned her trade from informal apprenticeship: she got an
entry-level job, or just hung out, in a library and learned from the
librarian there. The same way that Percy is supposed to learn his job
as a bureaucrat. Probably the same way Charlie learned to be a dragon
wrangler.

I believe that there are also formal systems of apprenticeship, in
well-organized guilds -- both practical and academic guilds. (In fact,
I imagine that the Potions Guild, for example, always has an
undercurrent of conflict between its practical members, who are
apothecaries and so, and its academic members, who do research.) 

There might also be some vocational schools, altho' the only one I can
think of just now, is that I think there are at least two ways to
become trained and credentialled in medimagic: one is to become an
apprentice (then journeyman, then master) of the Healers Guild (which
I is what I think Pomfrey did) and the other is to go to a vocational
school of medimagic, perhaps associated with St. Mungo's Hospital.

The applicant has to find one Master willing to take himer on as an
apprentice (recommendations from Hogwarts professors, good scores on
relevant NEWTs, the Master being friends with the applicant's parents
might all help). Then learn from a mixture of hands-on assisting the
master (the main part of vocational apprenticeship) and studying and
writing essays and doing experiments assigned by the master (a bigger
part of academic than vocational apprenticeship) plus attending some
public lectures and demonstrations given by the Guild at the
Guild-house. The difference beween that and being an undergraduate is
subtract the whole social part of being an undergraduate:
apprenticeship is not about meeting people who will be important and
useful in later life.

The master can certify hiser apprentice as a journeyman, who is
allowed to be employed in that field (generally only under the
supervision of a master, but I suppose that some jobs are certified by
the Guild as simple enough for a journeyman to do them without
supervision) and can find the same or a different master to supervise
hiser studies toward becoming a master himerself. The journeyman's
studies in an academic guild are a bit like grad school (more like the
years between having finished all the grad school classes and
finishing the dissertation). Besides putting in a set amount of time
and passing an examination (set by a Guild committee, all masters),
the candidate must present a masterpiece: an example of work heesh has
done that is of the quality expected of a master. In an academic
guild, that is often a research discovery presented in the form of a
dissertation. The masterpiece must be approved by a committee of guild
masters, and then I envision at least the Transfiguration Guild
requiring its candidates to defend (answer questions more-or-less
about) their dissertations against all comers in the Guildhouse
lecture hall for 24 hours straight... I suppose in the Potions Guild,
the masterpiece, at least for those who intend to own their potion
shop, is to brew a set of very complicated prescriptions.

The academic guilds may give the title of Doctor as an honor to some
of their best masters (selected by a committee of Doctors), in which
case, they may allow only Doctors to be on the committee for judging
masterpieces, to supervise journeymen working toward Mastery, to run
for Guild President, Treasurer, etc...

***

I can understand JKR's statement only by assuming that she meant that
the wizards don't have universities like Muggles now do, as giant
factories for turning young men and women into potential employees.
That the wizards cling to a more old-fashioned system in which people
pursue advanced study for love of the subject rather than because a BA
or BS is required to get a job in a totally unrelated field. That such
study is generally pursued as an apprenticeship under one master plus
going to occasional guest lectures by others, rather than as a
curriculum in an institution with many teachers. That, in line with my
mention of 'apprenticeship', each subject has its own Guild (Guild in
Latin is Collegium) which takes care of awarding its own degrees and
managing its own finances and can not *imagine* being subject to any
University Administration. 

I have spun out this theory to much greater length than is supported
by canon, such as figuring out all the sources of funding for pure
research (personal wealth, patronage from a wealthy wizard, a grant
from MoM's Committee on Experimental Charms, a grant from the Museum
of Magic, which is an institution that is not mentioned in canon but
must exist), and what the degrees are (apprentice is like undergrad,
journeyman is like graduate, master is the advanced degree which is
required to be allowed to take on apprentices and provides the
honorable title Magister or Magistra) and the requirements for the
degrees (apprentice becomes journeyman by recommendation of hiser own
Master and passing a written exam given by the Guild, journeyman
becomes Master on recommendation of hiser own Master, approval by a
specific Guild committee of a written dissertation reporting original
research, passing an oral exam given by that committee, and a public
dissertation defense for 24 hours straight). The degree of Doctor is
bestowed by the Board of Directors of the Guild upon highly respected
Masters as a surprise (they didn't apply for it or take a test), and
only Doctors are allowed to be on the committees for approving
dissertations and giving oral exams for Mastery candidates and some
other stuff that I forget right now. But I did put in some hard
feelings among the Masters of the Potions Guild because the ones who
own shops and run factories pay most of the dues but the ones doing
pure research are awarded most of the Doctorates.

I figure Madam Pomfrey was trained as a Healer by apprenticeship and
advanced study in the Healers Guild. That being a practical rather
than research guild, the 'masterpiece' presented by the candidate for
Mastery is not a research dissertation but a case history (with
witnesses) of a patient who was cured of something serious.