I was just out of high school. I was too busy working several jobs between HS and college to even have noticed.
But I have read them all and I really want to do Salem, MA-centered Fanfiction about a Salem academy...but as Salem actually is.
The concept still is very similar to the Worst Witch, which I grew up with. On a lot of levels. I mean, she did make it different enough to stand out as a story on it's own, I'm not saying that - but there are a lot of resonant parallels and sometimes it bugs me a bit that HP got all this attention for being something new and different when Jill Murphy already trod the magic school concept some time earlier with Mildred, Maud and Ethel.
This is the reason I read Harry Potter.
Because of The Worst Witch (which was not popular in book form in the US, you had to really track them down), I will watch anything where there's a witch/wizard school and someone fails spectacularly at being a witch/wizard.
The funny thing is that the first time I saw the TV movie with Fariuza Balk I thought it was stupid. I was 8 and my mom's best friend's daughter LOVED it, so we had to watch it all the time. And given that it was HBO in the 80s it was on endlessly, but my brother and I would make fun of the Tim Curry scene. I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show a few years later when it was released on VHS (Yeah, I was like 12. Good job, adults around me) and Tim Curry in general grew on me, quickly becoming my must-watch Halloween treat. So I tracked down as many of the books I could find. There were only 3 at the time.
And then I discovered a Wizard of Earthsea.
For my money though, the best book about a witch or wizard school and absolute failure in the exact way I love though is Diana Wynne Jones'
Year of the Griffin.