Kerry Katona: Confessions, a school shutdown and the private choices pushing her toward Spain

kerry katona’s public frankness about past relationships and personal crisis now collides with a fresh family disruption: her daughter Dylan-Jorge’s private school is set to close, a development she says may accelerate plans to relocate abroad.

Kerry Katona’s family history and the admission that reshaped her life

Kerry Katona is the mother of five children and has described a series of personal upheavals that shaped her decisions. She had two daughters, Molly and Lilly-Sue, with Brian McFadden, and later married taxi driver Mark Croft on Valentine’s Day 2007. Her daughter Heidi was born in 2007, followed by son Maxwell in 2008. That marriage ended in 2011. Katona has acknowledged serious difficulties during that period, including financial collapse and drug use; she said, “I hated my life. I’d lie in bed for three days in a row doing cocaine with Mark. We did coke in our en suite and had a lock on the door. “

In 2023 she publicly described having an affair with Kevin Greent, an ex Royal Marine, calling that relationship “the best thing I ever did” and saying it helped rescue her from her circumstances. Later marriages and relationships followed, including a marriage to the late George Kay that produced her son Dylan-Jorge (DJ).

Is a daughter’s school closure the trigger for a move with Paolo Margaglione?

Katona and her partner Paolo Margaglione have discussed moving their families out of the UK. That plan has gained new urgency after Katona revealed in a column that DJ’s private school is scheduled to close in July, and that DJ has been placed on a waiting list at another local school while siblings who attended the same school—Molly, Lilly and Heidi—are already linked to it. Katona wrote she has been trying to secure a place elsewhere but has repeatedly missed contact with admissions, and she questioned whether this disruption might be “a sign to up and leave to Spain and start fresh. “

Practical pressures intersect with immediate personal needs: Katona said she and Margaglione planned travel to Marbella where they intended to take part in a private plant medicine spiritual retreat at Conscious Hub, guided by Colin and Ariana, as a way to “press the reset button” ahead of her upcoming Abba Mia tour. She described feeling emotional and anxious and framed the retreat as part of preparing for demanding touring and performance commitments.

What this convergence of past admissions and present pressures reveals

Factually, three threads run together. First, Katona’s own public admissions about addiction and an affair are matters she has framed as pivotal to changing her life trajectory. Second, immediate logistical pressures—DJ’s school closure and sibling links to the local school system—create a concrete disruption to family stability. Third, Katona and Margaglione are actively weighing relocation while combining personal restoration strategies, including a plant medicine retreat and preparation for a high-energy tour.

Viewed together, these elements suggest a clear causal chain: longstanding personal volatility and past recovery choices have informed Katona’s appetite for decisive life changes; an acute administrative shock—the school shutdown—has supplied a proximate reason to accelerate relocation plans; and scheduled professional commitments add urgency to finding a stable base from which to work. Heidi’s presence in Katona’s public life—she appears alongside her mother on a televised project and is described as close to another well-known contemporary family—adds a visible dimension to decisions that are both private and public.

Accountability and clarity the public should expect

Verified facts here are drawn from Katona’s own statements about her family, past marriage to Mark Croft, her admission about the affair with Kevin Greent, and her recent column detailing DJ’s school closure and the plan with Paolo Margaglione to consider moving abroad. Verified quote material is Katona’s own wording about drug use in her marriage and her description of the affair as “the best thing I ever did. “

What remains uncertain and requires transparency is the concrete timeline and logistics if relocation is pursued: where children would be enrolled, how existing education placements would be resolved, and how professional commitments will be managed across jurisdictions. Those are requests for practical accountability, not speculation: parents, educators and audiences have a stake in knowing how decisions made in response to one crisis will affect children’s schooling and welfare.

For now, kerry katona’s public narrative is one of a woman mobilizing past admissions and present disruptions to seek a different life for herself and her family, but the full implications for her children’s education and stability deserve clearer answers from the adults involved.