Ruth Kelly - Background

Background

Kelly was born in Limavady, Northern Ireland. She also lived briefly in the Republic of Ireland before moving to England where she attended Edgarley Hall - the prep school for Millfield School. She was educated at the independent Sutton High School, run by the Girls' Day School Trust (GDST). After being moved up a year and sitting O-levels at Sutton High School at the age of 15, she decided to move back to Ireland to look after her ill grandmother. Her grandmother died after six weeks, but Kelly stayed for a year, living with her aunt and taking A-level French. She returned to England on winning a scholarship to the sixth-form of Westminster School. From Westminster, Kelly went up to The Queen's College, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1986, graduating in 1989, and then on to the London School of Economics where she was awarded a MSc degree in Economics in 1992. Kelly taught at University of Navarra and after she joined the Labour Party in 1990, becoming a member of the party's Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency party. She was an economics writer for The Guardian from 1990, before becoming deputy head of the Inflation Report Division of the Bank of England in 1994. She married Derek John Gadd, a local government officer, in 1996, and they have four children.