Two wizard/witch schools which carry a lot more conviction I feel are the ones in Jill Murphy's Worst Witch series, and Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea. Both of whom to my mind avoid falling into J.K.Rowling's trick of over-egging the this-is-ever-so-funny pudding.

A lot of it feels like cranking it out to a formula - and she can't be blamed for that. When you've struck gold on your first effort, it must be hard to not to try to repeat again and again.

That sounds crabby, and I'm not crabby. I'm reading the Goblet of Gold at the moment, and look forward to teh next chapter. But I still think it could have been so much better, and I don't mean more literary.