A school which was told it needed to improve has now been given a 'good' rating by Ofsted.
Headteacher James Eldon had already been credited with turning around the fortunes of Manchester Enterprise Academy in Wythenshawe and leading MEA Central in Levenshulme when he took the reins at Manchester Academy in Moss Side in 2018.
Similar to Wythenshawe's MEA, the high school was in difficulties and was still categorised as 'requires improvement' by inspectors.
But after its most recent inspection in September, the school has now been upgraded to 'good', prompting a visit from Ofsted's chief inspector Amanda Spielman, who was given a tour of the school and introduced to pupils.
The school's success, which comes despite the disruption the pandemic brought to education, is seen as a huge achievement and inspectors say the rating reflects current data showing that overall gradings of secondary schools in the Manchester area are improving.
And the fact that most of the 1,000+ pupils at Manchester Academy speak English as an additional language, is even more impressive.
"We know that the past few years have been tough so any school that improves in grading should be extremely proud of their efforts," said Ms Spielman. "It’s a credit to the teachers and the children."
Asked whether there is an acknowledgement within Ofsted that pupils in the north faced a greater disadvantage because of the amount of time lost due to class closures during the pandemic, she said: "Covid was a huge disruption to schools right across the country. Inspectors will always seek to understand the context in which a school is working, including how the pandemic affected pupils and what that means for pupils’ education now.
"Closing classes and moving to remote education was a poor substitute for the normal school experience. There’s a lot of effort being made now to bring children back to where they ought to be.
"For that to work, children need to be in class with their teachers; they will understand better than anyone what their pupils have missed - and how to bridge any gaps in their knowledge and understanding."
Mr Eldon said 700 laptops were provided to students to support remote learning when classrooms were closed and its strong 'partnership with the community has supported students to recover post-Covid' - a recovery that's still ongoing.
"A significant number of our students don’t speak English at home, so when we first returned to school there was work to be done to refresh spoken and written English skills," he said.
"This work is ongoing but the Academy’s literacy team, as recognised by Ofsted, have done important work to address these gaps."
He added: "We are immensely proud of the Academy’s improvement as it demonstrates the talent in our community and the ambition of our students and families.
"Our work with students who don’t speak English or whose literacy is still developing was recognised by Ofsted and we have demonstrated that students can develop English rapidly and achieve strong academic results."
Despite his success leading the transformation of several schools, he says it's not him that has 'a magic touch' - it's his team, delivering magic every day.
"We have a great team at Manchester Academy," he said. "There is no magic touch, just hard work, compassion and relentless optimism from a committed team of staff.
"Many of our leaders have developed in the Academy to now be responsible for important areas of improvement. Both our teaching staff and amazing support staff deliver Manchester magic everyday and go above and beyond."
When Mr Eldon spoke to the MEN back in 2021, one of his main aims was to make sure pupils and families have pride and confidence in the school - which is part of the United Learning group - and not be affected by the area's history.
"All those slights on an area’s reputation can really affect them and almost become a part of them," he told us. “It’s really important to be defiant about that."
Describing the school community as 'amazing', he says there are still times when they are 'all frustrated that negative stories attract far more attention than so much of the good news which is happening in Moss Side'.
But the school's turnaround is a success story they are proud of, and one they're happy for people to shout about.
He said: "Our inspection proves that there are ambitious and talented students across our community and we are so proud to provide them with a good school where they can succeed and thrive."
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