Okay, I read Hogwarts has a student population of around 1,000. That means they pump out 143-ish grads a year.

Assuming no deaths until old age and twice the average lifespan of a human (140 years old), that equals to around 20,000 wizards in magical Britain in the best of best case scenarios. But as not all students make it to 7th years/NEWTS, I feel that will even out the assumptions. I'm not counting squibs although they do make an element of the economy and all that.

My memory sucks and I haven't read the books in many years and at this point am relying on mixed book/movie recall, but has there been mention of more magical schools inside Britain?

I don't see how 20,000 people in various stages of life is really enough to sustain a wizarding civilization or anything. That's like a single modern town. If you really think about it, their numbers are so small, that it explains why some of the traditions are medieval and bass ackward.

But come on, there has to be at least a dozen more magical schools in Britain, maybe not as prestigious or big, but still.

 

Maybe some wizards don't go to school. Join family businesses and whatnot. Have you considered that?

 

As the guy above sort of said, it depends on whether schooling is compulsory in magical Britain. I remember Lupin says in DH that people can send their kids to Hogwarts, home school them or send them abroad.

 

Please please please stop trying to force logic or anything that makes sense into Rowling's Harry Potter world. It just doesn't end well.

 

Firstly, some kids are home schooled, or sent to other schools.

Secondly, where did you see 143 graduates in a year. There was about 40 odd in Harry's year, yes that number could have been low due them being born during the war, the birth rate would be lower, but still not that much lower.

Thirdly, there isn't a separate magical civilization, it's more like they are an ethnic minority within the greater British civilization. They have small entirely magical enclaves, like Diagon Alley or Hogsmede, but for the most part they are intermixed with muggles.

Fourthly, nowhere did it say there aren't other schools in Britain, just that Hogwarts is the best.

Finally JKR completely fucked up the numbers, don't try to make sense of these sorts of things in Harry Potter. It won't end well.

 

Oh, and use the godamned search option to find threads that might answer your question before you start a new thread.

 

Roger that, but I have to make conversation somehow

I got 143 by taking 1000 students (at any one time according to canon) and diving by 7 years. After I made my post I realized that not everyone goes the full 7 years but it sufficed for a quick and dirty estimate.

As for going abroad, I would assume a rougly equal number of students from abroad would come here - as Hogwarts is supposedly prestigious. But seeing that Hogwarts can't really provide decent DADA teachers or even protect their student all that well, I could understand why that might not be the case.

Just for reference, about 1.7% of school age kids get homeschooled in the US (my google fu did not find for Britain) and anyway, just throwing that out there and not asking it to be assumed for the discussion at hand.

 

That's a great way to make people hate you, and then hound the shit out of you until you leave.

 

Yeah, I know and experienced fandom niches like this before... almost incestuous.

Why do I feel like I'm in the internet version of the movie The Descent?

Anyway, I'm not here to offend people or anything. And I've been many places where necromancing old threads is frowned upon so.... I read the rules, such as they are, and am trying to get a feeling for the board as much as I can. There just seems to be a lot left unwritten in the stickies, more than most boards. And if it's not to be, I'll voluntarily just drop off. I actually just signed on to find a fic which the author deleted from ffnet and thought was here but can't really find it either, wayback machine doesn't have it either.

 

If, as JKR says, there is a student population of 1000...then why does Harry's year only have 40 or so folk in it? Beyond that, how are classes managed if there are 7 year groups, the first 5 of which are getting taught classes in the 6 main subjects, with the last 5 years being taught a selection of classes from the whole curriculum? Are there actually enough teachers to cover all the classes? I don't think so, unless someone can work something out that I've missed.

Also, as you say if based on 1K students, there is an appropriate general population size, say somewhere between 10K and 15K, depending on how common childbirth is. That is a ridiculously small population, especially when its spread over the whole of the UK. However it would explain in book 4 Arthur and Amos knowing exactly who was in the area and whether they were going to the world cup or not.

In from a population of 15K people, you have perhaps 7K who regularly interact with wizarding society, either through working or visiting Diagon Alley or being in the Ministry, then quite literally everyone will know everyone. I grew up in a village with...about 4K people in it. I knew damn near everyone by face if not by name, and everyone knew everyone else's business. On top of that there were a couple of neighbouring villages of similar size, and I knew a sizeable portion by at least face, if not by name. And again, the business of one person in one village was subject of gossip in the other villages as well, and people would at least roughly know who was involved.

Personally, I like to imagine that JKR didn't give a random number and that the general population is much larger. Maybe around 1 million. It allows a proper society to exist. It even allows small sub-societies to exist (pureblood extremists, muggleborn revolutionists etc) as needed for a fic, without breaking the bounds of probability based on the size of society.

 

I'm... very tempted to give your post a thumb up. I'm a bit wary about the possible incestuous reaction of the fandom niche, though.

Oh well.

 

It would be nice if you told DLP why you feel the need to unearth this topic- it has been discussed dozens of times on this board alone, not to speak of the whole fandom.

Maybe you should take a few minutes to actually RESEARCH the topic you want to talk about? GOOGLE is your friend!

I don't know exactly what numbers are needed to sustain a population, but geneticists have theorized that the whole human species may well have melted down to about 2000 individuals following the (hypothesised) Toba catastrophe 70.000 years ago. Genetic drift shouldn't be a problem for magical Britain, even if it would be isolated from the rest of the wizarding world.

What about the magical populations isolation from the main (muggle) part of humanity? Or the well founded speculation that magic is a factor that slows down technological and social change because it makes live so very easy?

Translation: "I want to write a shitty fanfic about an OFC who went to such a school until she tranfers to Hogwarts where she is the top student in all classes and Harry Potter falls madly in love with her. I want it = It simply MUST be so!!!"

 

*sigh* Well, since the subject's been revived...

Rowling has thrown numbers around left and right in the hopes that one of them would make sense. There were a few bits that implied a Hogwarts with 1000+ students, possibly because she liked the image of a thousand people cheering at Quidditch matches and the like. (I think she said as much at some point)

But the majority of the numbers support a Hogwarts population that would struggle to pass 300, and a Wizarding Britain that doesn't have more than a few thousand. Not even 20,000 - more like 3,000.

How would this possibly work? Not elegantly, but it may be possible. If you were determined to make some sense out of it, you might posit that certain sectors (e.g. agriculture and mass production industry) represent tiny portions of the workforce. That would mean that the majority of jobs are wrapped up in a) creative pursuits (music/entertainment, book writing, etc.), b) bureaucracy, and c) more traditional craftsman-like production.

The one that sticks out like a sore thumb is the bureaucracy. The Ministry of Magic would be grossly oversized for a society of 3,000. Or a society of 20,000 for that matter. Again, not impossible, but wizards would really, really have to have a love for government. Ah well - I guess it's possible that the government has bloated out over the years in order to compensate for a lack of available jobs (again, no heavy industry or intensive farming (?) to give the unwashed masses a living). Hell, the same thing has happened in some real-world countries.

One interesting note: if Wizarding England has 3,000 people, the losses during the Battle of Hogwarts are proportionately greater than the UK's casualties during World War II. It would be like a million-plus people in the UK dying overnight.

 

Of course we could just assume that the Hogwarts of Harry's era has a small group (say 300-400) because in the past century Wizarding Britain's been through two wars, during which a large number of young people died and during which the birth rates would have dropped.

I like the theory that Wizarding Britain has a 20,000+ population but that the population is top heavy with a significant portion of it belonging to age groups born before WW2 and during the post-WW2 pre-Voldemort era.

 

^ Makes sense to me, though I'm not a canon-wizard.

 

An interesting idea, having society so small. But is the Ministry really that bloated? Do we actually know how many people are employed in different roles? For all we know there might just be a dozen aurors total, which wouldn't exactly be bloated. The main departments might just consist of the Head of Department and a half dozen assistants for various roles, maybe with each of them with a couple of underlings. It doesn't bring the size of the Ministry to huge numbers. Quite big for a society of 3000, but not overly huge.

Though, if there are only 3000 people, I can see a lot of them being involved in small scale traditional pursuits that provide them enough income to provide for things they can't use their magic for. For example, they'd need to buy food, but not necessarily clothing. They don't need to spend money repairing or even building their houses.

So whilst there might just be one proper apothecary, maybe two, there might be a couple of dozen families who's main source of income is from raising a single magical creature for the purposes of selling the ingredients that come from it. That sort of thing.

Its certainly a very different way of looking at wizarding society, and would be interesting world building for the right sort of fic.

 

Well Rowling obviously took the typical English Private school model of about ten students per house per school year and forgot to account for the fact that most these schools have 9-15 houses.

 

@Mordecai - in GoF it says that the Quidditch Cup stadium was built by a Ministry task force of 500 over the course of a year. If you take this as an indicator of how big the Ministry is then it's extremely bloated, even for a population of 20,000.

Personally, however, I subscribe to the theory that the task force included not just permanent Ministry employees but contractors as well.

 

I was about to suggest what you raise in your second paragraph Alive. If there are only 3000 people, or even only 20,000 people then that group of 500 would almost certainly have to be temporary contractors. And in all likelihood quite a number of them would probably have been hired in from abroad, as there is no saying that there would be enough people in the UK with both the talent to do the job, and the desire to be hired on a temporary contract to do it.

 

Encouraging discussion on the forums is good.

Not being able to admit the simple fact that Rowling's world doesn't completely add up is bad. Y'know, 'cause of the magic and shit.