I was completely distracted in a meeting the other day wondering where magic kids go to school before they go to Hogwarts. A quick search on the internet revealed that JK Rowling thinks most kids who are from magical families are home-schooled prior to attending Hogwarts.
Okay, so what did we figure was the number of magic kids born every year in the Hogwarts service area? About 40. That means there are about 440 kids aged 0-10 who will eventually attend Hogwarts and be expected to perform at a minimum level. It seems a little bizarre that a society with only 40 new members per year into a pool of about 3000 wouldn't take a little more care of its early learning responsibilities.
There are 4 basic types of 0-10 year old in the Hogwarts universe:
1. Born into a magic or half-magic family, home-schooled.
2. Born into a magic or half-magic family, Muggle schooled.
3. Born into a Muggle family, Muggle schooled.
4. Born into a Muggle family, home-schooled.
Let's break those down a little bit.
1. Born into a magic family, home-schooled. Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley are both in this camp, apparently. In Ron's case, his family is poor and has few resources, relies on hand-me-down items, books, and clothing, and has to seriously budget for school related expenses. In Draco's case, there's lots of old money, and Draco probably has some grim-faced tutor that teaches him stuff. In either case, performing magic isn't allowed. In Ron's case, even knowing how magic works isn't allowed, since he believes "Sunshine daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat rat yellow" is a real spell. Ron's dad works with Muggle artifacts, but is painfully ignorant of Muggle life, and one would expect his children to be slack-jawed at the sight of someone from the Muggle world.
2. Magic born, muggle schooled. Who would do this to their kid? "Hey Billy, I know you're only six years old and all, but if you say one word about magic to any of your classmates, people will show up from the Ministry and freaking erase their minds! So don't make any friends, or even talk to people." Maybe in the case of mixed parents, where one is Muggle and the other is Magic, and they're not sure if their kid will be magic or Squib, and they keep magic mostly hidden from their kids...
3. Muggle/Muggle - Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. This is the general situation most kids reading Harry Potter are in. Finally, they get to leave the horrible, boring world of school, where they have to learn about stupid stuff like science, literature, math, art, history, languages, and culture, and go to a school where they don't have to know anything about the 7 billion other people in the world they live in, and can just focus on learning about one small aspect of life on Earth with about 3,000 other people. Sounds like a dream come true.
4. Muggle/Home-schooled - There are a lot of different reasons people home-school, ranging from extreme religious/political reasons to difficulties with the school system to disagreements with public school curriculum and more. I can imagine for some parents, a kid displaying magical abilities would be considered possessed, and they would take what they consider appropriate action. For other parents, I'm sure it would be just as 'exciting' as for public/private school parents, to learn that their child is eligible to go to a magical school they've never heard about and be taught by people who don't understand the first thing about their life or experiences as a Muggle.
With 40 new kids each year, let's make some assumptions based on what we know. In Harry Potter's year, at least 3 kids were magic-born to magic families, and were probably home-schooled: Draco, Ron, and Neville. At least 2 kids were raised by Muggles: Harry and Hermione. Dean said his dad was a Muggle and his mom was a witch, so he might have had either experience. There doesn't seem to be a lot of other examples of muggles and witches marrying, however, so I'm assuming that's an unusual circumstance. Harry and Hermione went to muggle schools growing up (at least, I think Hermione did - there's no reason to think otherwise). So, I'm going to assume that out of 40 kids, half are born into magic families and are home-schooled in some way. Then there's probably about 19 kids who are born into Muggle families and go to regular schools. And there's 1 each year who has some less common situation.
Rowling's answer to the question about schooling, that most magic born kids are home-schooled or go to regular Muggle school, reveals that she didn't give this part of magic kid's lives much thought.
Given a Ministry that is incredibly invasive into magic-user's lives already, I find it hard to believe there isn't some type of early learning initiative in place, either approved home courses or testing or monitoring to ensure that kids preparing to go to Hogwarts are going to be prepared for the level of academic rigor they have to display upon entry. And yet there are kids from Muggle families that would know absolutely nothing, NOTHING, about magic and all it's intricacies, sitting in classes with kids who have been surrounded by magic all their lives, and expected to learn and progress at the same rate.
It would be like the situation we have in the regular world with technology - kids who grow up in homes with ubiquitous computer technology - smart phones, tablets, computers, video games, etc. will have a much easier time adopting the increasingly common practice of using computers to do and turn in school work than students who grew up without that access, either because of economic or philosophical reasons. That creates an advantage gap that is harder and harder to bridge as kids get older.
For the wizarding world to actually expect to produce wizards at their best level, there should be more resources in place to get young children from non-magic families familiar with their abilities and the world those abilities open to them.
