ABSTRACT
By the ‘social-selective function of education’ we may refer either to selection within an educational system by social criteria; or, alternatively, to selection by an educational system, on any or no criteria, for future statuses, often stratified, usually outside the formal educational system. Scottish collectivism is to do with three things: an assertion of nationality, a mode of status allocation, and a type of social policy. The Scottish concern for the social accessibility of the university a century ago is reflected in the magnificent statistics they bothered to collect. These show in great detail that in the 1860s something over 20 percent of students in Scottish universities had manual origins. The Scottish university system of the 1960s resembled that of the 1860s in certain important respects. In their external relations both systems were based on a pattern of non-selective entry to an education in which there was little formal ‘processing’ and which led in turn to diverse, stratified outcomes.
