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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

One answer that I don't often see cited is a more explicitly inclusive, or even multicultural approach to schooling in English cities from the 1980s onward. See, e.g., a summary of the recommendations of the 1985 Swann report, presented to then-Edu Sec Keith Joseph: education-uk.org/documents/sw...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It has some effect definitely. But from the 1970s-1990s there was a (large) inequality in attainment (see chart below) But there is also clear evidence of an improvement over time, from the 1990s-2010s, among a UK born population (indeed some children of UK born)

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Imagine looking at this chart and thinking the 1990s were when the rot starting to set in, that we need to return to the 1980s or before when minorities did much worse at school

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

And hasn't always been true, as you know. I find this chart on 1990s-2000s attainment striking - and showsi how inequalities are not inevitable nor is ethnicity destiny. For most ethnic minority groups, gaps weren't closed until the 2010s, and they have now reversed (which does attract commentary)

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

In 1997 the Home Office commissioned a report on perpetrators of racist violence My summary (from 2002) on the author, Rae Sibbit's, argument, on the need for government to address the wider group who support racist views & so enable violence cdn.prod.website-files.com/61488f992b58...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

A reminder that white nationalism is not new to Britain, nor is the racism it jointly directs at Black, Asian and Jewish people

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Remembering Kelso Cochrane www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/murder-i...

Kelso Cochrane
Notting Hill, London, May 17, 1959, just after midnight. Having had his finger, which he had broken at work, re-plastered at the local hospital, Kelso Cochrane was walking home. He was quite near the house in which he shared a room with his partner Olivia, when a gang of white youths surrounded him. They called him many insulting names, punched, pushed, thumped and then stabbed him. When he collapsed they ran away.

Two black men walking nearby rushed over. A taxi stopped. Cochrane was picked up and put in the cab but by the time they reached the nearby hospital he had stopped breathing. Someone called a reporter at the Sunday Express and said ‘three white youths have stabbed a darkie named Cochrane’.

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Our latest report w/Policy Institute at King’s College London finds inequalities in student mental health In 2025, 26% of students from areas w/the lowest rates of higher education participation reported a mental health difficulty compared w/19% from areas w/the highest taso.org.uk/libraryitem/...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Still the best abstract I've ever read, and the paper (from 1978) isn't too shabby either, even if struggle to understand some of it pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/637918/

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The below chart indicates just how strongly persistent absences drive attainment 40% of those with persistent absences attain at the expected standard, compared to around 84% of those with no absences 2.5% of those with persistent absences attain the higher standard, vs 22% w/no absences

chart copied from this link, which explains the findings in further detail: https://www.health.org.uk/resources-and-toolkits/data-tools/evidence-hub/relationship-between-school-absences-and-attainment

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Do we think something more like the first or the second set of curves here is more desirable? Which do we think better affirms the economic value of HE in the labour market, and which better reflects the aim of parity of esteem between graduates and non-graduates?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Nobody wd defend the first pair of bell curves, where NO non-graduate earns more than any graduate, nor the second pair, where graduate & non-grad earnings overlap completely If we think parity of esteem is a goal, the q is how many grads can/shd earn less than non-grads wonkhe.com/blogs/a-grad...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Data in this thread based on this recent release explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statist... See this chart in particular, outlining that ethnicity differences are significant, FSM-nonFSM gaps substantial, gender inequalities for all groups, as well as bigger gender gaps among FSM

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Count Binface will surely exceed his highest constituency vote: 308 He won't surpass the near 25k who voted for him in two London Mayoral elections; he shd exceed the 1% vote share in those contests, his previous high And better his best previous result: 6th place en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_B...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Me messaging my Maine friend in October

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

A previous example of a huge sport and social moment in Mexico City I was fortunate to meet Tommie Smith in 2018 and will always recall his words - never quit

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

TIL the views of a previous SSPX 'bishop'. Predicting a nuclear attack on the 2012 Olympics, Holocaust denial, women shouldn't wear shorts or go to university just for a start... I suppose 'controversial', while weak, is more accurate than 'traditionalist' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Williamson_(bishop)

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The decline (-39%) in the study of languages at universities over the past decade is very striking, at a time when enrolments have risen It has affected more popular languages like Spanish & French, & African & Asian languages too From an excellent @britishacademy.bsky.social tool linked in image

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-research/british-academy-shape-observatory/higher-education-and-research/who-studies-shape/

Chart showing a 39% decline in the study of Languages and Area Studies, from 31.2k in 2015/16 to 19.1k in 2024/25

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Knowing so many more schools going thru this too and all the children and teachers and parents impacted but still hard not to feel this personally/ individually

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

London chaos, all 8 million of us feeling this Seriously, tho, I hope everyone nearby in that part of Peckham is safe

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A chart from our @taso.org.uk on care leaver access to higher education. They are much more likely to take 'alternative' as opposed to 'traditional' pathways into higher education, in a context where their HE participation rate is 14%, 3x less than overall population cdn.taso.org.uk/wp-content/u...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

In this topsy turvy unreality, both facts and morality are deliberately confused In the 1980s a debate about anti-racism and anti-anti-racism, reached the letters pages in the London Review of Books, from Roger Scruton, G A Cohen, Roy Honeyford and Ann Dummett Cohen didn't mince his words

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Free school meal eligibility over the past decade Today's children are tomorrow's students, and tomorrow's students will have much greater likelihood of living in poverty than those of today As David Kernohan says, this will have serious implications for higher education policy and practice

Graph showing rise in children eligible for free school meals. Around 14%, or 1 in 7 over 2015-18, rising to over 20% by 2020/21 and increasing further each year to 26.5% for 2025/26

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

A decline in the number of 18 year olds has major implications for the overall recruitment of students to university & also for *inequalities* in participation, as @dkernohan.bsky.social highlights in @wonkhe.bsky.social Between 2015-18, around 14% of children were eligible for FSM; now it's 26.5%

The regulatory environment needs to support participation growth, not obstruct it. If the two-thirds target is to mean anything against demographic headwinds, the OfS should be directed to prioritise access and participation outcomes, and ensure institutions are resourced appropriately to deal with the task of teaching an expanded population of students with less successful prior experiences of education.

Student maintenance needs to be addressed as an urgent barrier to participation. For many potential students, particularly those from lower-income households, the decision not to enter HE is driven not by tuition fees but by the impossibility of living costs. The maintenance system has been eroded by inflation and is now a binding constraint on participation. Targeted maintenance grants – as the government has begun to signal – should be introduced at scale, not as a marginal supplement.

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

A datapoint often overlooked: White Irish The age pyramid below shows how many older people & how few younger Why? Bc all of the now 60+yr olds had no children or grandchildren? Or bc those children/grandchildren now likely tick White English/British? If this can happen with Irish ppl...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

The beliefs of the suspects are also extreme in their racism and violence (content warning) The extent of the police incompetence and casual racism (referring to 'coloureds'), their refusal to acknowledge the extreme racism of the act and the suspects is being underplayed today for shameful reasons

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

From the transcripts to the inquiry, a PC openly saying that he still denies (in 1999) that Stephen Lawrence's death was motivated by or linked to racism: 'I still refuse to recognise it sir' www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/...

See Guardian link above for transcript of a PC being asked about Stephen Lawrence's murder

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I wrote my first policy report in 2002, on how to address perpetrators of racist violence The context then was to build on the recommendations of the Lawrence Inquiry report, tho it still feels relevant today

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

There are definitely unequal returns for some groups However, if you compare, eg FSM graduates to FSM non graduates, the benefits are clear The FSM-nonFSM earnings gap is evident for all educational qualifications, suggesting wider structura class drivers of inequalities in the labour market?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Data clearly shows that on average it is better to attend higher education than not, if the metric is wages & employment. This includes free school meal pupils, only 30% of whom (20% of FSM boys) attend HE currently This is *average*; some will not see wage benefits taso.org.uk/libraryitem/...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Hobson Jobson silly autocorrect Anyway the entry for 'Apricot' mentions Romans, Greeks, Byzantines, Arabs, St Helena; Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Frank (in Barbary) languages as well as the bazaars in Cyprus, the Cape, China &c So anyway food culture is global everywhere, obviously

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Just some of the A words in Hobson Hobson related to food, demonstrating not only the links across continents but that people of the time understood and sought to understand if not celebrate the circulation of foods in global cultures

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

I have enjoyed dipping into Hobson Jobson since I was first introduced to the 1902 text, and it is unsurprisingly fruitful to look up its entry for MULLIGATAWNY (first reference noted in 1784) archive.org/details/hobs...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

A correction that jars, recalling a time when minor errors were deemed worthy of making true

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Our afternoon session, showing the range of activities at universities to address post-entry inequalities among their students

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

A slide from a TASO partnered project at Aston University, showing why we need to evaluate

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Looking forward to our @taso.org.uk annual conference, kicking off shortly

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Higher education participation rates, for care leavers and those with experience of care, by SEN status This suggests that SEN status and experience of care are the greatest barriers to HE participation, even more than FSM Note: FSM group here excludes children with experience of care, eg, G1-G5

Chart from page 25 of this report: https://cdn.taso.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025-03-Pathways-higher-education-people-experience-children-social-care_TASO_REES.pdf

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Looks like the BBC liked this framing too Seriously: looking at Harrow and Hillingdon (and Bexley) it appears Reform unable to win over conservative-leaning voters in the capital perhaps because they are more likely to be socially liberal and/or ethnic minority voters?

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

2022 Councillors survey linked below More likely to be retired, older, graduates and white than the general population. Gender spilt around 60/40 Perhaps on age and graduates the 2026 cohort will be more representative? But more male and white? www.local.gov.uk/sites/defaul...

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

'Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times'

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