School is rewriting story of Moss Side

HEADTEACHER ON SUCCESS OF CHALLENGING AREA'S REPUTATION

- NEAL KEELING

HEADTEACHER James Eldon has a message to deliver. He is immensely proud that his school has earned recognition with an educational accolade.

But the message goes deeper and is meant to help erase unfair and dated assumptions about his high school and its location. Manchester Academy is in Moss Side.

The two words became synonymous with gun crime and a waste of young lives, reaching a depressing peak in the district and south Manchester generally in 2007. But that is no reason to assume its estates are devoid of hope, talent, and soaring aspirations.

On Moss Lane East, the 1080-student Academy is showing impressive proof that kids with the right stuff, and support, can be nurtured anywhere. The challenge for the school is enormous. A total of 120 different languages are spoken there.

Eighty percent of students have English as an additional language. Which makes it both remarkable and almost a necessity that it has won a regional award for going the extra mile to communicate with all its pupils and parents.

Judges at this year’s Educate Awards awarded the school The Communication Award, and noted: “To ensure nobody is left out, it has combined the effective use of mainstream communication techniques with innovations such as website pop-ups to translate information into Arabic, Somali, and Urdu.”

Mohammed Adam is Manchester Academy’s School Family Liaison Officer and provides a link between parents and carers whose first language is not English. He speaks fluent Somali, Arabic, Danish, and English, and is available in school on a daily basis to bridge that gap in communication. He recently won a national award for pastoral care.