Fiona Millar

Fiona Millar (born 2 January 1958) is a British journalist and campaigner on education and parenting issues. She is a former adviser to Cherie Blair. She contributes to Education Guardian and the Local Schools Network website.

Early life

She attended Camden School for Girls, then a selective grammar school, on Sandall Road in Kentish Town, north London. She would later become a critic of grammar schools. She studied economics and economic history at UCL and joined the Mirror Group's graduate training scheme in 1980.

Career

She began in journalism as a trainee on the Daily Mirror, later moving to the Daily Express, where she was a colleague of Peter Hitchens. She was a freelance journalist between 1998 and 1995 and was an adviser to Cherie Blair from 1995-2003. In 2005, along with Melissa Benn, she co-wrote a pamphlet A Comprehensive Future: Quality and Equality for all our children and is active in the campaign against the Trust Schools white paper, appearing alongside such Labour Party figures as Neil Kinnock and Estelle Morris at campaign meetings.

She is vice-chair of Comprehensive Future, an organisation that promotes the perceived advantages of comprehensive schools in the UK. Her children attend state schools in the Camden LEA, and she is a governor of the William Ellis boys' comprehensive school and a governor of Parliament Hill School. Millar's articles have appeared regularly in the education supplement of The Guardian newspaper since 2003. She was Chair of Trustees of the Family and Parenting Institute until 2010 and now chairs the National Youth Arts Trust.

In 2009 Millar received the Fred and Anne Jarvis Award from the National Union of Teachers for her campaigning for good quality local comprehensive schools as against academies.^[1] That same year she wrote The Secret World of the Working Mother, a book about finding the balance between working and being a mother.

In 2010 she helped form the Local Schools Network, a pro-state schools pressure group

Personal life

Her partner is Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former Director of Communications. They have two sons (born October 1987 and July 1989) and a daughter (born April 1994). They live in Gospel Oak. She is a "Distinguished Supporter" of the British Humanist Association.^[2]

Books

• Millar, Fiona (March 2009). The Secret World of the Working Mother. Vermilion. ISBN 978-0-09-192423-2. 

External links

• Guardian profile
• Fiona Millar on Twitter
• Local Schools Network

Video clips

• Grammar schools: right or wrong?

References

1. ↑ "Dave Brinson: Executive Report". Dave Brinson. 10 April 2009. Retrieved 19 November 2012. 
2. ↑