An Austrian school for witchcraft and wizardry has reported a surge in recruitment since the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. When the Hexenschule first opened in 2003, the world's press scoffed, but two years later, it is booming.

Everybody wants to go to Hogwarts! All Europe is rushing to sign up for this school where, presumably, you can fail to hand in homework on the grounds that it turned into a dog. If you let off a stink bomb, I expect the teacher just says: 'Ah, sulphur ... ' and wipes away a sentimental tear. (I'm not saying the school is evil, but it is Austrian.)

The very existence of the Hexenschule, nestled in the mountains of Klagenfurt, is reassuring proof that Tony Blair is not the only person committed to university places for all. British educational theory has been, for some time, that one must chase after teenagers and throw qualifications at them, creating 'academic disciplines' out of tourism, media and sport. If they refuse to engage, then we simply enlarge the syllabus further until it engulfs whatever they happen to be interested in. There is no hiding from qualifications, kids! If you bunk off maths and skulk behind the bike sheds listening to your iPod, we will hunt you down and give you a degree in 'iPod Studies' or 'Bike Shed Culture'. Ha!

But it isn't just Britain, we now discover. Pupils at the Hexenschule learn astrology, potion-making and the history of magic. If all goes well, headmaster and grand wizard Dakaneth (real name Andreas Starchel) presents them with a 'Veneficus Certificate', which will be of tremendous use when applying for a job at McDonald's, mainly because when they get bored they can turn a customer into a toad. (I was going to say something about turning a toad into a hamburger, but I know how long these McLibel cases take).

Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in the concept of a witchcraft academy, one that JK Rowling neatly masks with pumpkin juice and quidditch. The problem is that magic, 'real' magic of the occultist kind, the kind that must surely be taught by anybody claiming to offer 'a history of magic', is at direct odds with the principle of schooling.

'"Do What Thou Wilt" shall be the only law,' said occultist Aleister Crowley, but as I remember it, my headmistress said precisely the opposite. 'Do What Thou Wilt' was the only bloody rule they didn't have.

School is all about taming children and teaching them to deny their immediate wants for broader social reasons. But 'magic' is all about freedom of thought and the bringing to bear of personal desires. Crowley also said: 'Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.' Even satanists these days are using the devil mainly as a metaphor to represent the shaking off of restrictive social and moral conformity and the embracing of opposites, i.e. selfishness.

I know a tiny bit about this subject, having discovered on the internet that a Dutch satanist has named himself after a character in a book I once co-wrote. The book's villain was called Doctor Reginald Osiris, a name which, we explained, denoted 'the most evil man in existence'. Our book is a comic one. The satanist took it seriously. Let's just say that I am somewhat confused by the compliment. It is hard to describe the mixed feelings which arise when one's book is described as 'wonderful' by a man who worships at the Cathedral of the Black Goat.

So anyway, I discovered from the fellow's website (and further investigation), that all this Crowleyesque magical stuff is heavily focused on the idea that Judaeo-Christian teaching is enslaving us, and doing what we are told is inherently wrong. If you were the headmaster of a witchcraft school, how exactly would you deal with a student who was late with an essay on this subject?

Some things are just meant to be extra-curricular.